Neural correlates of spoken word production in semantic and phonological blocked cyclic naming

Abstract

The blocked cyclic naming paradigm has been increasingly employed to investigate the mechanisms underlying spoken word production. Semantic homogeneity typically elicits longer naming latencies than heterogeneity; however, it is debated whether competitive lexical selection or incremental learning underlies this effect. The current study manipulated both semantic and phonological homogeneity and used behavioural and electrophysiological measurements to provide evidence that can distinguish between the two accounts. Results show that naming latencies are longer in semantically homogeneous blocks, but shorter in phonologically homogeneous blocks, relative to heterogeneity. The semantic factor significantly modulates electrophysiological waveforms from 200 ms and the phonological factor from 350 ms after picture presentation. A positive component was demonstrated in both manipulations, possibly reflecting a task-related top-down bias in performing blocked cyclic naming. These results provide novel insights into the neural correlates of blocked cyclic naming and further contribute to the understanding of spoken word production. ARTICLE HISTORY

The gender congruency effect in Catalan–Spanish bilinguals: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

“…In this line, Barber and Carreiras (2005) and Caffarra, Janssen, and Barber (2014) found that gender disagreement in word pairs formed by a noun and an adjective elicited an “N400-type effect”: disagreeing words produced larger negative deflections as compaed to agreeing words. Wang et al (2018) reported similar findings in a bare noun production task in Mandarin Chinese, in which they manipulated the congruency of a lexico-syntactic classifier feature (comparable to grammatical gender). The results showed that the classifier incongruent condition elicited larger N400 effects in comparison to the classifier congruent condition.…”

“…Thus, they propose that gender information would not be retrieved when agreement is not required. In contrast, some recent evidence suggests that this grammatical property also seems to be automatically activated during lexical access outside of a sentence context, that is, in the production of bare nouns (Alario, Ayora, Costa & Melinger, 2008; Cubelli, Lotto, Paolieri, Girelli & Job, 2005; Duràn & Pillon, 2011; Paolieri, Lotto, Leoncini, Cubelli & Job, 2011; see also Wang, Shao, Chen & Schiller, 2018, for a comparable lexico-syntactic classifier feature). Several theoretical proposals have been made to account for such findings, in terms of different dynamics of activation of grammatical gender information.…”

A critical review of the behavioural, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological studies of co-activation of representations during word production

“…Using blocked cyclic naming, Janssen, Carreiras, and Barber (2011) found an effect in this window, with related blocks producing smaller negative amplitudes than unrelated blocks (Janssen, Hernández-Cabrera, van der Meij, & Barber, 2015;Wang, Shao, Chen, & Schiller, 2018). In a PWI paradigm comparing close and distant categorically related distractors to unrelated ones, Rose et al (2019) found a lower amplitude associated with the closely related compared to unrelated distractors.…”

“…But this late effect might very well reflect the top-down effect of the frontally mediated "booster" assumed in incremental learning models (Oppenheim et al, 2010). Similarly, Wang et al (2018) claimed that their findings were evidence against the incremental learning model because they took the divergence of related vs. unrelated conditions at around 200 ms to represent lexical selection, and incremental learning was supposed to have its effect before lexical selection, i.e., during the mapping of semantic features to lexical items. But this claim is again based on an assumption derived from a serial model with competitive selection, the problems with which have been laid out in this and the previous point.…”

“…For instance, based on the appearance of ERP differences starting after 300 ms poststimulus-onset, Python et al (2018b) concluded that the facilitatory effect of semantically related primes must be post-lexical, because lexical selection must be over by 275 ms (see also Python et al, 2018a). In contrast, studies that have reported semantically induced interference have taken relatively early effects around 200 ms post-picture-onset to indicate lexical competition (e.g., Costa et al, 2009;Rose et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2018). Together, these interpretations counterintuitively put lexical competition before semantic facilitation, which is often attributed to the dynamics of spreading activation preceding lexical selection (e.g., Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009;Nozari, 2019).…”