Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2018
Like the BIA model (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 1998; van Heuven, Dijkstra & Grainger, 1998) and the BIA+ model (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002), the Multilink model is a symbolic, localist-connectionist, interactive model for lexical processing in the visual domain. In our view, the symbolic nature of Multilink makes it attractive and easily interpretable, even in relation to brain activity (Page, 2000, p. 501; 2017). Symbolic localist-connectionist models have a long tradition and have been applied to many different areas of cognitive research (e.g., Grainger & Jacobs, 1998). As a consequence, a lot is known about their properties and limitations (e.g., Bowers, 2009). These models can also easily be organized hierarchically in a cognitive functional way, and they have a reasonable degree of flexibility while still being falsifiable. Thus, despite the availability of other sophisticated frameworks for modeling language processes, a lot can still be gained from localist models.
The authors thank Aaron van Geffen, Randi Goertz, Erik Lormans, and Ardi Roelofs for valuable theoretical discussions and/or help in simulations. They also thank Eva van Assche, Nicolas Dirix, Wouter Duyck, and Annette De Groot for kindly making available empirical data for simulation purposes.