A funny thing happened on the way to articulation: N400 attenuation despite behavioral interference in picture naming

Abstract

We measured Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and naming times to picture targets preceded by masked words (stimulus onset asynchrony: 80 ms) that shared one of three different types of relationship with the names of the pictures: (1) Identity related, in which the prime was the name of the picture (“socks” – <picture of socks>), (2) Phonemic Onset related, in which the initial segment of the prime was the same as the name of the picture (“log” – <picture of a leaf>), and (3) Semantically related in which the prime was a co–category exemplar and associated with the name of the picture (“cake” – <picture of a pie>). Each type of related picture target was contrasted with an Unrelated picture target, resulting in a 3 × 2 design that crossed Relationship Type between the word and the target picture (Identity, Phonemic Onset and Semantic) with Relatedness (Related and Unrelated). Modulation of the N400 component to related (versus unrelated) pictures was taken to reflect semantic processing at the interface between the picture's conceptual features and its lemma, while naming times reflected the end product of all stages of processing. Both attenuation of the N400 and shorter naming times were observed to pictures preceded by Identity related (versus Unrelated) words. No ERP effects within 600 ms, but shorter naming times, were observed to pictures preceded by Phonemic Onset related (versus Unrelated) words. An attenuated N400 (electrophysiological semantic priming) but longer naming times (behavioral semantic interference) were observed to pictures preceded by Semantically related (versus Unrelated) words. These dissociations between ERP modulation and naming times suggest that (a) phonemic onset priming occurred late, during encoding of the articulatory response, and (b) semantic behavioral interference was not driven by competition at the lemma level of representation, but rather occurred at a later stage of production.

Electrophysiology of cross-language interference and facilitation in picture naming

“…Also considering exclusion of error trials, the percentages of trials that were discarded from each condition were as follows: semantic 22.7%, unrelated 23.4%, translation 22.5%, and control 23.1%. These percentages were similar for the different distractor conditions, and they correspond to earlier studies (e.g., Blackford et al, 2012;Hirschfeld et al, 2008;Verhoef et al, 2009Verhoef et al, , 2010.…”

“…According to Blackford et al (2012), the N400 amplitude attenuation despite behavioral interference on semantic trials challenges the competition view implemented in WEAVER++ and agrees with the response-exclusion account. However, in WEAVER++, a picture primes a semantically related distractor word and vice versa, whereas a picture and unrelated word do not prime each other.…”

“…To avoid contamination of the EEG signal by movement-related artifacts caused by the naming response, only trials with RTs longer than 600 ms were included in the analyses (cf. Blackford et al, 2012;Verhoef, Roelofs, & Chwilla, 2009, 2010. Using this RT criterion, 3.6% of all trials were excluded from further analysis.…”

“…In a monolingual picture-word interference study, Blackford, Holcomb, Grainger, and Kuperberg (2012) had participants say, for example, "horse" to a pictured horse preceded by masked words such as duck (the semantic condition), chair (the unrelated condition), horse (the identity condition), or home (the phonological condition). The onset of the word was 80 ms before picture onset, whereby the word was presented for 60 ms followed by a 20-ms backward mask.…”

“…The mean amplitudes for the four conditions We performed the quadrant analysis following related studies from our lab and in the literature (e.g., Blackford et al, 2012;Chauncey et al, 2009;Verhoef et al, 2009Verhoef et al, , 2010 to assess the distribution of the effects across the scalp. As outlined earlier (Section 1.3), we expected the N400 effects to be broadly distributed, and the quadrant analysis was performed to verify whether this was indeed the case.…”