| Abstract: | 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) |
