Word frequency effects in speech production: Retrieval of syntactic information and of phonological form.

In 7 experiments the authors investigated the locus of word frequency effects in speech production. Exp 1 demonstrated a frequency effect in picture naming that was robust over repetitions. Exps 2, 3, and 7 excluded contributions from object identification and initiation of articulation. Exps 4 and 5 investigated whether the effect arises in accessing the syntactic word (lemma) by using a grammatical gender decision task. Although a frequency effect was found, it dissipated under repeated access to a word's gender. Exp 6 tested whether the robust frequency effect arises in accessing the phonological form (lexeme) by having Ss translate words that produced homophones. Low-frequent homophones behaved like high-frequent controls, inheriting the accessing speed of their high-frequent homophone twins. Because homophones share the lexeme, not the lemma, this suggests a lexeme-level origin of the robust effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual coherence affects phonological activation of context objects during object naming.

In 4 picture-word interference experiments, speakers named a target object that was presented with a context object. Using auditory distractors that were phonologically related or unrelated either to the target object or the context object, the authors assessed whether phonological processing was confined to the target object or not. Phonological activation of the context objects was reliably observed if the target and context objects were embedded in a conceptually coherent scene (e.g., if the picture showed a mouse eating some cheese), regardless of whether the target was cued by its thematic role (agent vs. patient) or by color. However, this activation dissipated if the two objects were presented in an arbitrary object array (e.g., if the cheese was presented along with a finger). These findings suggest that conceptual coherence among multiple objects affects the information flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic and phonological activation in noun and pronoun production.

Speakers can refer to objects and other entities by nouns or pronouns. The present article investigated the production of gender-marked pronouns in German. Four picture-word interference experiments are reported, addressing 2 questions. First, is the lemma of a referent noun (i.e., the representation of the referent noun's semantic and syntactic properties) accessed when producing a pronoun? Second, if so, is this access confined to the lemma, or will the referent noun's phonological form be activated, too? The results suggest that in generating pronouns, speakers accessed the lemma of the referent noun, whereas its phonological form was not substantially activated. The results are discussed in the context of other recent experimental studies of pronoun and noun production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is there semantic interference in delayed naming?

The semantic interference effect in the picture–word interference task is interpreted as an index of lexical competition in prominent speech production models. Janssen, Schirm, Mahon, and Caramazza (2008) challenged this interpretation on the basis of experiments with a novel version of this task, which introduced a task-switching component. Participants either named the picture or read the word, depending on the word's color. Janssen et al. reported semantic interference in picture naming, regardless of whether the word appeared simultaneously with the picture (immediate naming) or 1,000 ms after the picture (delayed naming). Because picture name retrieval is completed in less than 1,000 ms, the finding in delayed naming was taken as evidence against the lexical competition account. In 3 sets of experiments conducted in German and English, we tested for semantic effects in Janssen et al.'s task-switching version and in the standard picture–word interference task. Using identical materials, we obtained sizeable interference effects in the standard task (Experiments 2, 4, and 6) but no effects in the task-switching version (Experiments 1, 3, and 5). When the word reading trials of the task-switching version were replaced with no-go trials (Experiment 7), semantic interference reemerged in immediate naming but was still absent in delayed naming. The experiments question the reliability of Janssen et al.'s critical finding and suggest that theoretical inferences about the origin of semantic effects in the standard picture–word interference task based on results from the task-switching version used by Janssen et al. are difficult to draw. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological activation of category coordinates during speech planning is observable in children but not in adults: Evidence for cascaded processing.

There is a long-standing debate in the area of speech production on the question of whether only words selected for articulation are phonologically activated (as maintained by serial-discrete models) or whether this is also true for their semantic competitors (as maintained by forward-cascading and interactive models). Past research has addressed this issue by testing whether retrieval of a target word (e.g., cat) affects--or is affected by--the processing of a word that is phonologically related to a semantic category coordinate of the target (e.g., doll, related to dog) and has consistently failed to obtain such mediated effects in adult speakers. The authors present a series of experiments demonstrating that mediated effects are present in children (around age 7) and diminish with increasing age. This observation provides further evidence for cascaded models of lexical retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Utterance format effects phonological priming in the picture-word task: Implications for models of phonological encoding in speech production.

Picture-word experiments investigating the production of multiword utterances with distractors that are phonologically related to words in noninitial position have yielded inconsistent results, ranging from facilitation to inhibition. A comparison of these studies is complicated by differences in detail. In parallel to the empirical inconsistencies, different theoretical accounts of phonological encoding in speech production have been provided. In the present article, the authors propose a unitary account, which can in principle account for facilitation, null effects, and inhibition. It assumes a graded activation pattern of the elements within the scope of phonological advance planning. The account is tested in an experiment varying utterance format while keeping all other aspects constant. The results are consistent with the proposed unitary account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrete serial versus cascaded processing in lexical access in speech production: Further evidence from the coactivation of near-synonyms.

In 5 cross-modal picture–word interference experiments, the authors investigated the time course of lexicalization in speech production. Participants named pictures of simple objects while hearing distractor words at different stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). Distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the picture name or its nontarget near-synonym. Compared with an unrelated control, effects from all distractors were obtained at a late SOA (150 ms) and vanished shortly thereafter (at SOA?=?300 ms). These findings conflict with the notion of an early selection of a single element. Rather, multiple lexical representations appear to remain active until late in the production process if a near synonymous lexical competitor is present. The authors discuss the scope of these observations and their relevance for discrete 2-stage and cascaded models of lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determiner selection in noun phrase production.

In 3 experiments, native speakers of German named pictures of 1 or 2 objects by producing singular or plural noun phrases consisting of a definite gender-marked determiner and a noun. When singular and plural determiners differed (masculine and neuter gender), naming latencies were longer for plural utterances than for singular utterances. By contrast, when singular and plural determiners were identical (feminine gender), no such effect was obtained. When participants produced bare nouns, the Gender x Number interaction disappeared. This pattern indicates that during the production of plural definite-determiner noun phrases, singular and plural determiners compete for selection. The resulting constraints on number and gender processing in noun phrase production are discussed in the framework of models of language production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The processing of free and bound gender-marked morphemes in speech production: Evidence from Dutch.

In many languages, the production of noun phrases requires the selection of gender-marked elements like determiners or inflectional suffixes. There is a recent debate as to whether the selection of freestanding gender-marked elements, such as determiners, follows the same processing mechanisms as the selection of bound gender-marked morphemes, such as adjective suffixes. Most of the evidence on which this debate is based relates to the gender-congruency effect in picture-word interference experiments. In the present article, the authors address this issue with a pure picture-naming task, extending previous work in German (H. Schriefers, J. D. Jescheniak, & A. Hantsch, 2005). The results of the present study on noun phrase production in Dutch show that both types of gender-marked morphemes are selected via the same basic processing mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distractor modality can turn semantic interference into semantic facilitation in the picture–word interference task: Implications for theories of lexical access in speech production.

A number of recent studies have questioned the idea that lexical selection during speech production is a competitive process. One type of evidence against selection by competition is the observation that in the picture–word interference task semantically related distractors may facilitate the naming of a picture, whereas the selection by competition account predicts them to interfere. In the experiments reported in this article, the authors systematically varied, for a given type of semantic relation—that is, basic-level distractors (e.g., fish) during subordinate-level naming (e.g., carp)—the modality in which distractor words were presented (auditory vs. visual) and the proportion of response-congruent trials (i.e., trials allowing for the correct naming response to be derived from both the distractor and the target). With auditory distractors, semantic interference was obtained irrespective of the proportion of response-congruent trials (low in Experiment 1, high in Experiment 2). With visual distractors, no semantic effect was obtained with a low proportion of response-congruent trials (Experiment 3), whereas a semantic facilitation effect was obtained with a high proportion of response-congruent trials (Experiment 4). The authors propose that two processes contribute to semantic effects observed in the picture–word interference paradigm, namely selection by competition (leading to interference) and response congruency (leading to facilitation). Whether facilitation due to response congruency overrules the interference effect because of competition depends on the relative strength of these two processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)