The Role of Task-Specific Response Strategies in Blocked-Cyclic Naming

Abstract

In word retrieval, speakers need to select a lexical entry among several co-activated candidates for lexicalization. How a target entry is selected is a matter of ongoing debate. Semantic context effects on naming times, as seen in the blocked-cyclic naming paradigm, are of specific interest to this debate. In the standard version of this paradigm, participants name lists of objects compiled from several repetitions (cycles) of a small set of semantically related objects (homogeneous context) or unrelated objects (heterogeneous context). In the first cycle, participants typically show either no context effect or semantic facilitation. From cycle two onward, they display a stable semantic interference effect that does not increase over cycles. In this review, I demonstrate that the early semantic facilitation effect is only observed consistently in studies that present homogeneous and heterogeneous lists in a blocked fashion. With this design, participants can easily pick up on the categorical relatedness of the items in semantically related contexts and apply this knowledge strategically. In principle, such response strategies can be easily tied in with existing models of lexical selection, but they are incompatible with accounts of semantic context effects that take the semantic facilitation effect in cycle 1 to be a consequence of processes inherent to the lexicalization process. Users of the blocked-cyclic naming paradigm should review their experimental designs carefully regarding potential response strategies. Once these are taken into account, the paradigm can be used to study lexical-semantic encoding in different populations of healthy and also impaired speakers.

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

“…We observed both the semantic blocking effect and the phonological facilitation effect: Reaction times (RTs) in the semantically homogeneous blocks were longer than those in the semantically heterogeneous blocks, in line with previous findings (e.g. Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009;Belke, 2017;Belke et al, 2005;Damian et al, 2001;Damian & Als, 2005). Furthermore, shorter RTs were observed in the phonologically homogeneous blocks relative to the phonologically heterogeneous blocks, which is in line with the phonological facilitation effect shown in previous studies (e.g.…”

“…The items in the homogeneous blocks are more predictable within the context of the task than items in the heterogeneous blocks (either semantically or phonologically). Alternatively, this component may correspond to a novel component related to task representation in the blocked cyclic naming paradigm, as argued by Belke and colleagues (Belke, 2008(Belke, , 2017Belke & Stielow, 2013). The component was proposed based on the observations that when participants have to perform a concurrent digit-retention task, their performances are affected in the blocked cyclic naming task, but not in the continuous naming.…”

“…Based on the results from previous studies, we expect to observe longer naming latencies in the semantically homogeneous blocks relative to the semantically heterogeneous blocks (e.g. Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009;Belke, 2017;Belke et al, 2005;Damian et al, 2001;Damian & Als, 2005; but see Navarrete et al, 2014), and shorter naming latencies in the phonologically homogeneous blocks relative to the phonologically heterogeneous blocks (e.g. Damian, 2003;Meyer, 1991;Roelofs, 1999;Schnur et al, 2009).…”

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

“…But there is disagreement about the origin of these opposing effects and how much they reflect underlying dynamics of the production system, as opposed to strategic effects. While facilitation has been viewed as a critical (Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009) or even the only real effect of co-activation of semantically related representations during the semantic-lexical activation phase (Mahon et al, 2007;Navarrete et al, 2014), others have viewed it as a strategic effect that is not consistently found (Belke, 2017;Belke et al, 2017). Collectively, the evidence suggests that while the facilitation often observed in the first cycle of the blocked cyclic naming task may be strategic in origin, facilitation observed in other cases is unlikely to be strategic (e.g., Nozari, 2019;Wei & Schnur, 2019), and is instead a reflection of the core dynamics of spreading activation in the system (see also Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009).…”

Word naming slows picture naming but does not affect cumulative semantic interference

“…The studies presented here were not specifically designed to distinguish between temporary bias effects(Roelofs, 2018) or incremental or error-based learning accounts of CSI effects (e.g.,Belke, 2017;Howard et al, 2006;Oppenheim et al, 2010). Relatively short lags are used in both experiments.…”