Ease of processing constrains the activation flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning.

Abstract

In 3 picture-word interference experiments, speakers named a target object in the presence of an unrelated not-to-be-named context object. Distractor words, which were phonologically related or unrelated to the context object's name, were used to determine whether the context object had become phonologically activated. All objects had high frequency names, and the ease of processing of these objects was manipulated by a visual degradation technique. In Experiment 1, both objects were nondegraded; in Experiment 2, both objects were degraded; and in Experiment 3, either the target object or the context object was degraded. Distractor words, which were phonologically related to the context objects, interfered with the naming response when both objects were nondegraded, indicating that the context objects had become phonologically coactivated. The effect vanished when both objects were degraded, when only the context object was degraded, and when only the target object was degraded. These data demonstrate that the amount of available processing resources constrains the forward cascading of activation in the conceptual-lexical system. Context objects are likely to become phonologically coactivated if they are easily retrieved and if prioritized target processing leaves sufficient resources.

Determinants of naming latencies, object comprehension times, and new norms for the Russian standardized set of the colorized version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures

“…Image agreement has not been systematically addressed in picture-naming studies, but those in which this variable has been taken into account have found it to exert a reliable influence (e.g., Barry et al, 1997;Bonin, Peereman, et al, 2003;Nishimoto, Ueda, Miyawaki, Une, & Takahashi, 2012). Our finding that word frequency was a reliable predictor of picture-naming speed is completely consistent with the view that object naming requires access to word form representations that are stored on the basis of their frequency of encounter (e.g., Jescheniak & Levelt, 1994;Mädebach, Jescheniak, Oppermann, & Schriefers, 2011).…”

“…Indeed, the key finding of our study is that objective word frequency was a reliable determinant of objectnaming but not of object comprehension times. This is especially important since objective word frequency has been acknowledged to be a genuine index of the retrieval of word forms or word form encoding (e.g., Bonin et al, 2012;Mädebach et al, 2011). However, AoA was also a reliable predictor of object comprehension times, and skeptical readers might consider this finding to be very much at odds with the idea that the name-object verification task is a reliable way of indexing the prelexical (but not the lexical) levels involved in object naming, given that AoA has often been considered to be located at the level of word form representations in object naming (for reviews, see Johnston & Barry, 2006;Juhasz, 2005).…”

Parallel object activation and attentional gating of information: Evidence from eye movements in the multiple object naming paradigm.

“…Finally, semantic interference (Oppermann, Jescheniak, Schriefers, & Gorges, 2010) and phonological facilitation (Madebach, Jescheniak, Oppermann, & Schriefers, 2010) effects from adjacent but not superimposed objects have been observed. In these experiments, subjects were cued to name one picture and told to ignore the other.…”

“…The difficulty of excluding distractor objects can arise because (a) distractor pictures were superimposed on target pictures (Morsella & Miozzo, 2002; Navarette & Costa, 2005; Tipper, 1985), (b) subjects were unable to anticipate before trial onset which object is the target and which is the distractor because of spatial (Glaser & Glaser, 1989; Madebach et al, 2010; Oppermann et al, 2010) or temporal (Humphreys, Lloyd-Jones, & Fias, 1995) uncertainty, or (c) targets and distractors were integrated into a thematically coherent scene (Oppermann et al, 2008). …”

Effects of parallel planning on agreement production

“…When they shifted their eye gaze to the second picture, this picture was replaced with a new picture. Facilitation was found when the old and new picture were identical or homophonous, suggesting that the second (old) picture was processed while the participants were still looking at the first picture (see also Mädebach, Jescheniak, Oppermann, & Schriefers, 2011;Malpass & Meyer, 2010;Morgan, Van Elswijk, & Meyer, 2008;Schotter, Ferreira, & Rayner, 2013).…”