Semantic similarity promotes interference in the continuous naming paradigm: behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

Semantic richness and density effects on language production: Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence

“…The observed temporal dynamics with influences of both effects starting at about 250 ms are in line with previous evidence for electrophysiological indicators of lexical competition, e.g., in cumulative semantic interference (Costa et al, 2009;Rose & Abdel Rahman, 2016) as well as picture word interference and semantic blocking (Aristei et al, 2011). The time course is also roughly in line with the meta-analysis by Indefrey (2011) suggesting lexical competition to start at about 200 ms.…”

“…It seems to reflect aspects of lexical selection, presumably the difficulty of lexical selection, as indicated by the positive correlation with naming times. An important factor in the difficulty of lexical selection is lexical competition such that a likely candidate process underlying the observed positivity might be lexical competition, which would be in line with previous reports of similar positivities in paradigms inducing lexical competition such as cumulative semantic interference (Costa et al, 2009;Rose & Abdel Rahman, 2016), picture word interference and semantic blocking (Aristei, Melinger, & Abdel Rahman, 2011), and would also seem plausible in light of the interpretation of the density effect as inducing enhanced lexical competition. On the other hand, the observation that high semantic richness induced a similar enhanced positivity even though it entailed facilitated naming suggests that the story might be somewhat more complex.…”

“…Indefrey notes the possibility that "more specific conceptual information needed to select a particular lemma among a number of competitors" may come in later (p. 7) which is in line with the idea that conceptual and lexical processes interact and overlap in time (e.g., Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009b;Levelt et al, 1999). By now quite a few studies report an increased posterior positivity starting between 200 and 250 ms for situations presumably involving enhanced lexical competition such as cumulative semantic interference as discussed above (200 to 380 ms; Costa, Strijkers, Martin, & Thierry, 2009), especially for closely related category members with high feature overlap (250 to 400 ms; Rose & Abdel Rahman, 2016), as well as semantically related as compared to unrelated distractor words in a picture word interference paradigm (200 to 550 ms) and objects named in the context of semantically homogenous as compared to heterogeneous blocks in the semantic blocking paradigm (250 to 400 ms; Aristei, Melinger, & Abdel Rahman, 2011). Because the inhibitory influence of intercorrelational feature density presumably also reflects lexical competition -even though not induced by a context but instead by the correlational structure of a concept's features -this effect should be reflected in a similar enhanced posterior positivity starting between 200 and 250 ms.…”

Facilitation and interference in naming: A consequence of the same learning process?

“…Both tasks elicit semantic interference whereby naming multiple items from the same semantic category slows production. Interference in both tasks generally responds similarly under different conditions, for example when items are semantically or associatively similar (e.g., Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2007; Rose & Abdel Rahman, 2016a,b; Vigliocco, Vinson, Damian, & Levelt, 2002), items are interleaved with unrelated items or time (Damian & Als, 2005; Howard et al, 2006; Schnur et al 2006; Schnur, 2014), the stimulus modality varies (pictures vs. words; Belke, 2013; Damian et al, 2001; Navarrete et al, 2016) or when items are categorized instead of named (Belke, 2013; Damian et al, 2001). For these reasons, blocked cyclic and continuous naming are considered variations of the same paradigm (i.e., serial naming) and multiple researchers when discussing semantic interference effects in speech production attribute these effects to the basic process of learning independent of the task in which they are observed (e.g., blocked cyclic naming or continuous naming; Belke & Stielow, 2013; Breining, Nozari, & Rapp, 2016; Crowther & Martin, 2014; Damian & Als, 2005; Howard et al, 2006; Kleinman, Runnqvist, & Ferreira, 2015; Llorens, Dubarry, Trebuchon, Chauvel, Alario & Liegeois-Chauvel, 2016; Navarrete et al, 2016; Navarrete et al, 2014; Oppenheim et al 2010; Rose & Abdel-Rahman, 2016a,b; Schnur et al 2006).…”

“…Both the interaction ( F1 (3,210) = 5.70, p = .001, F2 (3,177) = 7.00 p < .001) and the linear contrast ( F1 (1,70) = 4.99, p = .029, F2 (1,59) = 4.82, p = .032; 3.0 ms/cycle) were significant. It is a question for future research as to whether the inconsistencies in reported condition × cycle interactions and linear contrasts in blocked cyclic naming (i.e., the growth effect) across studies (reported non-significant interactions in Belke and Stielow (2013) but significant interactions reported in Belke (2008); Navarrete et al, (2012); Schnur et al, (2006)) are due to Type I error (potentially incorrect statistical approaches yielding falsely significant condition × cycle effects) or Type II error (e.g., too few subjects or items to detect the effects). …”