Editing Semantics (section)

=== Psychology ===
{{main|Semantics (psychology)}}
Psychological semantics examines psychological aspects of meaning. It is concerned with how meaning is represented on a cognitive level and what mental processes are involved in understanding and producing language. It further investigates how meaning interacts with other mental processes, such as the relation between language and perceptual experience.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Smith|Rips|Shoben|1975|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=o5LScJ9ecGUC&pg=PA1 1–3]}} | {{harvnb|Sanford|2009|pp=792–793, 796}} }}</ref>{{efn|Some theorists use the term ''psychosemantics'' to refer to this discipline while others understand the term in a different sense.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Halpern|Voĭskunskiĭ|1997|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=02JK4iG16GAC&pg=PA21 21]}} | {{harvnb|Cohen|2009|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6U01MmL9fxsC&pg=PA59 59]}} }}</ref>}} Other issues concern how people learn new words and relate them to familiar things and concepts, how they infer the meaning of compound expressions they have never heard before, how they resolve ambiguous expressions, and how semantic illusions lead them to misinterpret sentences.<ref>{{harvnb|Sanford|2009|pp=793–797}}</ref>

One key topic is [[semantic memory]], which is a form of [[general knowledge]] of meaning that includes the knowledge of language, concepts, and facts. It contrasts with [[episodic memory]], which records events that a person experienced in their life. The comprehension of language relies on semantic memory and the information it carries about word meanings.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Smith|Rips|Shoben|1975|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=o5LScJ9ecGUC&pg=PA3 3–4]}} | {{harvnb|Hampton|2015|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=GplGCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA125 125]}} | {{harvnb|Tulving|2001|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=-wt1aZrGXLYC&pg=PA278 278]}} }}</ref> According to a common view, word meanings are stored and processed in relation to their semantic features. The feature comparison model states that sentences like "a robin is a bird" are assessed on a psychological level by comparing the semantic features of the word ''robin'' with the semantic features of the word ''bird''. The assessment process is fast if their semantic features are similar, which is the case if the example is a [[Prototype theory|prototype]] of the general category. For atypical examples, as in the sentence "a penguin is a bird", there is less overlap in the semantic features and the psychological process is significantly slower.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Sanford|2009|p=792}} | {{harvnb|Smith|Rips|Shoben|1975|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=o5LScJ9ecGUC&pg=PA3 3–4, 42]}} | {{harvnb|Hampton|2015|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=GplGCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA125 125–128]}} | {{harvnb|Shi|2017|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=4vatDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA85 85–86]}} }}</ref>