The Revised Hierarchical Model: A critical review and assessment
Open accessAbstract
Brysbaert and Duyck (this issue) suggest that it is time to abandon the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) in favor of connectionist models such as BIA+ (Dijkstra and Van Heuven, 2002) that more accurately account for the recent evidence on non-selective access in bilingual word recognition. In this brief response, we first review the history of the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM), consider the set of issues that it was proposed to address and then evaluate the evidence that supports and fails to support the initial claims of the model. Although fifteen years of new research findings require a number of revisions to the RHM, we argue that the central issues to which the model was addressed, the way in which new lexical forms are mapped to meaning and the consequence of language learning history for lexical processing, cannot be accounted for solely within models of word recognition.
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The integrity of language abilities in the untreated language facilitates cross-language generalization (CLG) via shared conceptual representations.
“Our results, on the other hand, align with a parsimonious interpretation of language processing in bilingual aphasia: the integrity of language abilities in the untreated language facilitate CLG via shared conceptual representations53,54.”
From Machine Learning Predictions of Recovery in Bilingual Poststroke Aphasia: Aligning Insights With Clinical Evidence (2025) · cites this paper as [53]
The section “On the nature of the semantics” (page not provided) says the Revised Hierarchical Model assumes a shared conceptual system across a bilingual’s two languages. It does not establish that intact abilities in an untreated language facilitate cross-language generalization in bilingual aphasia; the search for aphasia, treatment, and transfer yielded no passage making that link. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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“53,54 Expanding on the role of aphasia severity and TLI, a meta-analysis of SFT in monolingual aphasia proposed that in individuals with milder aphasia, the language sys-tem is more preserved and responsive, providing the necessary resources to support the relearning of previously acquired but…”
- Authors
- KROLL, J. F., VAN HELL, J. G., TOKOWICZ, N., & GREEN, D. W.
- Affiliations
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- KROLL, JUDITH F.
- Venue
- Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2010-06-09
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 373-381
- ISSN
- 1366-7289 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-1841
- PMC
- PMC2910435
- OpenAlex
- W1992782979
- Cited by
- 637
- References
- 79
- Citations by year
- 2026: 29 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 57 · 2022: 34 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 83 · 2019: 94 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 27 · 2012: 27
- FWCI
- 43.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Bilingualism Language and Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD053146)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- Revised Hierarchical Model, bilingual word recognition, connectionist models, BIA+ model, lexical access, language learning history, bilingualism
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