Phonological priming effects on speech onset latencies and viewing times in object naming

Abstract

An earlier experiment (Meyer, Sleiderink, & Levelt, 1998) had shown that speakers naming object pairs usually inspected the objects in the required order of mention (left object fIrst) and that the viewing time for the left object depended on the word frequency of its name. In the present experiment, object pairs were presented simultaneously with auditory distractor words that could be phonologically related or unrelated to the name of the object to be named fIrst. The speech onset latencies and the viewing times for that object were shorter after related distractors than after unrelated distractors. Since this phonological priming effect, like the word frequency effect, most likely arises during wordform retrieval, we conclude that the shift of gaze from the fIrst to the second object is initiated after the word form of the fIrst object's name has been accessed.In studies oflanguage production, speakers often name single objects in one-word utterances (e.g., cross or ball). On the basis of the results of such studies, detailed models of object naming have been proposed (e.g., Glaser, 1992;Humphreys, Lamote, & Lloyd-Jones, 1995;Humphreys, Riddoch, & Quinlan, 1988;Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Though adult speakers sometimes produce one-word utterances, they often (perhaps more often) say sentences in which they refer to several concepts and express their relationships. In order to fluently produce such utterances, speakers must select the concepts to be mentioned and the corresponding words in close temporal succession. The issue addressed in the present paper is how the planning processes for the words of an utterance are coordinated with each other in time.Before turning to the coordination ofthe planning processes, we will outline which processes take place when a speaker names a single object. Our working model of object naming (Levelt et aI., 1999) distinguishes between the visual-conceptual processes involved in object recognition and the following lexical access processes. Visual-conceptual processing comprises two steps. First, a percept is computed from the visual image. A percept is an integrated representation of the visual properties of the object, such as its shape, size, color, and current orientation. Second, an appropriate lexical concept is accessed. Lexical concepts can be viewed as nodes in a semantic network. Labeled connections (e.g., "is-a," "has-a") express their relationships (Roelofs, 1992). Lexical concepts differ from other concepts in that they have links to entries in the mental lexicon. Lexical access also comprisesThe authors thank Herbert Baumann, John Nagengast, and Johan Weustink for technical support and Andrew Ellis, David Irwin, Pim Levelt, Janice Murray, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript. Correspondence should be addressed to A. S. Meyer, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England (e-mail: a.s.meyer@bham.ac.uk).two main steps. The first step is the selection of a syntactic word unit, a lemma. The...

Horizontal Information Flow in Spoken Sentence Production.

“…Such a result clearly suggests that the second picture is not attended to and its grammatical encoding is not initiated until the phonological encoding of the lexeme corresponding to the first object has been carried out. This finding was further reinforced by the results of a study by Meyer and van der Meulen (2000), which indicated that viewing times to the left-most object were shorter after phonologically related than phonologically unrelated auditory primes. Such a result again indicates that the right-most object is not fixated on until the phonological planning of the word corresponding to the left-most object has been conducted.…”

“…Because there is evidence that semantic interference effects only arise during lemma access (e.g., Damian et al, 2001; and not during conceptual planning (e.g., Schriefers et al, 1990), such a finding may suggest that there is a temporal overlap in the access of lemmas at opposite ends of the clause. This in turn would seem to contradict the many recent studies that have provided evidence for incremental lemma access (e.g., Griffin, 2001;Griffin & Bock, 2000;Levelt & Maassen, 1981;Martin, Katz, & Freedman, 1998;Meyer et al, 1998;Meyer & Van der Meulen, 2000;Schriefers, de Ruiter, & Steigerwald, 1999;Schriefers, Teruel, & Meinshausen, 1999;Smith & Wheeldon, 1999, 2001; although see Ferreira & Swets, 2001, for evidence of nonincremental access). In fact, however, such findings are not irreconcilable.…”

Capacity demands of phoneme selection in word production: New evidence from dual-task experiments.

“…S. Meyer, Roelofs, & Levelt, 2003). In studies by A. S. Meyer and van der Meulen (2000) and by Mortensen, Meyer and Humphreys (in press), the time required for phoneme selection was varied in the same way as in Ferreira and Pashler's (2002) Experiment 2, namely by combining target pictures with phonologically related or unrelated distractor words. In both studies, the speakers looked at them for a shorter time and named the objects faster when related rather than unrelated distractors were presented.…”

Lateralized electrical brain activity reveals covert attention allocation during speaking

“…For instance, the speakers gaze at each object in the order of mention, and keep their gaze longer at objects associated with low frequency names than with high frequency names (Griffin, 2001;Meyer et al, 1998). Effects of word frequency and of phonological priming suggest that speakers shift gaze to the next object after having encoded the name of the previous object at the level of the phonological form (e.g., Meyer and van der Meulen, 2000). Thus, the eye movement record is thought to provide a window into the coordination of visual information uptake and motor output.…”