The mental lexicon is a complex cognitive system representing information
about the words/concepts that one knows. Decades of psychological experiments
have shown that conceptual associations across multiple, interactive cognitive
levels can greatly influence word acquisition, storage, and processing. How can
semantic, phonological, syntactic, and other types of conceptual associations
be mapped within a coherent mathematical framework to study how the mental
lexicon works? We here review cognitive multilayer networks as a promising
quantitative and interpretative framework for investigating the mental lexicon.
Cognitive multilayer networks can map multiple types of information at once,
thus capturing how different layers of associations might co-exist within the
mental lexicon and influence cognitive processing. This review starts with a
gentle introduction to the structure and formalism of multilayer networks. We
then discuss quantitative mechanisms of psychological phenomena that could not
be observed in single-layer networks and were only unveiled by combining
multiple layers of the lexicon: (i) multiplex viability highlights language
kernels and facilitative effects of knowledge processing in healthy and
clinical populations; (ii) multilayer community detection enables contextual
meaning reconstruction depending on psycholinguistic features; (iii) layer
analysis can mediate latent interactions of mediation, suppression and
facilitation for lexical access. By outlining novel quantitative perspectives
where multilayer networks can shed light on cognitive knowledge
representations, also in next-generation brain/mind models, we discuss key
limitations and promising directions for cutting-edge future research.

本文介绍了多层网络的结构和形式，讨论了多层网络作为研究精神词汇库的一种有效的数学框架。多层网络能够捕捉不同层次的词汇关联类型如何共存于大脑的精神词汇库，并影响认知加工。通过研究多重层次的联结，本研究提出了新的定量视角讨论了未来先进研究的方向和关键限制。