Repeated naming affects the accessibility of nonselected words: Evidence from picture–word interference experiments.

Abstract

This study traced different types of distractor effects in the picture-word interference (PWI) task across repeated naming. Starting point was a PWI study by Kurtz et al. (2018). It reported that naming a picture (e.g., of a duck) was slowed down by a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative picture name from a different taxonomic level ("birch" related to "bird") when compared to an unrelated control, indicating that the alternative name was (phonologically) coactivated. Importantly, the effect was stable across repeated naming. The authors argued that this stability challenges adaptive models of word production according to which coactivated but nonselected words become less accessible for future retrieval; such a change in lexical accessibility should have been reflected in reduced interference. Using a similar experimental protocol as Kurtz et al., our study looked at the stability of different distractor effects in PWI. Interference from a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative name was stable across repeated naming, replicating Kurtz et al. In contrast, interference from a distractor word denoting a semantic category coordinate ("stork") was reduced across repeated naming. A similar pattern was found for a distractor word corresponding to an alternative name ("bird"). Facilitation from a distractor word phonologically related to the target name ("dust"), in contrast, was stable across repeated naming. We discuss the implications of these findings with respect to the issue of changes in the accessibility of lexical representations, the use of the PWI task in this context, and the use of this task in general.

Adaptive processing in word production: Evidence from picture–word interference studies.

“…Experiment 1 revealed semantic interference and phonological facilitation. Across times of measurement semantic interference was reduced, replicating what Wöhner et al (2023, Experiments 2–4) observed with fixed target-distractor mapping. The important novel finding is that this pattern was also obtained with variable target-distractor mapping.…”

“…Also, no cell means broken down by repetition block were reported which makes it difficult to evaluate the results. A recent study by Wöhner et al (2023) found a reduction of semantic interference over two repetition blocks (from 75 to 23 ms in Experiment 2 and from 37 to 19 ms in Experiments 3 and 4; the experiments used two different material sets). Also, a meta-analysis by Bürki et al (2020) points toward reduced semantic interference over repetition blocks.…”

“…The experimental protocol followed Wöhner et al (2023, Experiment 2). There were 11 repetition cycles of the pictures.…”

“…Experiment 2 had the same number of participants and items as present Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 from Wöhner et al (2023). To estimate the power of its design, we took a similar approach as for Experiment 1.…”

“…One reason was that a different development (specifically nonreduction) would help to put the development of the semantic effect into perspective. Previous research has found phonological facilitation to be stable across repeated naming (for corresponding evidence with fixed target-distractor mapping see Kurtz et al, 2018;Wöhner et al, 2023; for corresponding evidence with variable target-distractor mapping see Jescheniak & Schriefers, 2001). One possible reason for this stability is that phonological distractors (partially) activate representations (individual phonological segments) that are to be used in the preparation of the target response , whereas semantic distractors primarily activate representations that are not to be used in the preparation of the target response.…”