The semantic nature of response competition in the picture-word interference task

Abstract

Picture-word interference refers to the fact that when a picture (Le.,line drawing) is presented with a word superimposed, picture naming latency is longer than when the picture is presented alone. In addition, naming latency will be further prolonged whenever the word and the picture are members of the same semantic category. This semantic interference effect was investigated in a series of studies in order to develop an appropriate model of the semantic processes involved in picture-word interference. In Experiments 1 and 2, it was determined that the associative strength between the word and the picture is unimportant in the picture-word interference task. In Experiment 3, it was demonstrated that the category typicality of the word and the picture is also unimportant in this task. These results suggest that the semantic processes in picture-word interference would not be well described by a semantic network model. This conclusion was reinforced by Experiment 4, in which it was found that the imageability of a word is a highly important factor in the picture-word interference task. The present set of results suggests that any model of the processes involved in picture-word interference must have at its core the notion of the word's "relevance" to the task of naming the presented picture.From the early research on the Stroop (1935) colorword phenomenon to more recent work by Rayner and Posnansky (1978) and Rosinski (1977), psychologists have used interference paradigms to investigate a wide range of perceptual, cognitive, and response processes.The technique is a simple one. A stimulus having two discrete components is presented to a subject. The subject's task is to respond to one of these components and ignore the other one. Response times in this situation are compared with response times in a control condition in which the stimuli presented involve only the relevant component. If response time differences between conditions are observed, it must be the case that the processing of the irrelevant component somehow interferes with the processing of the relevant one. If not, the two components are, in some sense, thought to be processed independently.The classic interference paradigm involves the Stroop (1935) color-word phenomenon. The stimuli are words that name colors, printed in incongruent ink colors. This research was supported by Grant A633 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. A major portion of this paper was reported at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, August 28-September 1, 1978. The author would like to thank Anne Kennedy for her help in the data collection and analyses and Albert Katz for his many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Special thanks are owed Joan Symansky, who provided much of the impetus for getting this project off the ground, and Eric Cartman for his continuing assistance in many areas of the present research. Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen J. Lupker...

Motivation and semantic context affect brain error-monitoring activity: An event-related brain potentials study

“…As expected, we obtained a typical semantic interference effect (for instance, Lupker, 1979;Schriefers et al, 1990;etc.). Participants were slower and made more errors during picture naming in semantically related blocks as compared to mixed blocks.…”

The Selection of Grammatical Features in Word Production: The Case of Plural Nouns in German

“…In the picture word-naming task, picturenaming latencies are slower when target picture and distractor word are members of the same semantic category. This effect is known as the semantic interference effect (Golinkoff & Rosinski, 1976;Lupker, 1979) and has been replicated many times (Caramazza & Costa, 2000;Glaser & Düngelhoff, 1984;La Heij, Starreveld, & Steehouwer, 1993;Levelt et al, 1991;Schiller & Caramazza, 1999;Starreveld & La Heij, 1995, 1996. If we find a semantic interference effect in Experiment 2, then we would know that distractor words are processed lexically.…”

“…This task is a variant of the Stroop (1935) paradigm and has been used successfully to investigate various aspects of lexical access in language production. Several researchers have shown that picture-naming latencies are affected by specific properties of the to-be-ignored word (e.g., Caramazza & Costa, 2000;Glaser & Düngelhoff, 1984;Glaser & Glaser, 1989;Lupker, 1979Lupker, , 1982Posnansky & Rayner, 1977;Rosinski, Golinkoff, & Kukish, 1975;Schriefers, 1993;Schriefers, Meyer, & Levelt, 1990; for reviews, see Glaser, 1992, andMacLeod, 1991). In the experiments reported below, target pictures had to be named in the singular or in the plural.…”

Phonological activation of category coordinates during speech planning is observable in children but not in adults: Evidence for cascaded processing.

“…Such a difference would be critical with respect to the locus of the mediated effect. If, for example, dog would not effectively and quickly be deactivated in the mental lexicon of the child upon hearing the segment /l/, the interference effect in the mediated condition (if cat is the target) would not come as a surprise; in fact, it would then reflect not phonological activation of semantic category coordinates but the persisting semantic activation of these words, and for that case interference has been demonstrated in numerous studies (e.g., Damian & Martin, 1999;Glaser & Düngelhoff, 1984;Jescheniak et al, 2001;Lupker, 1979;Rosinski, 1977;Schriefers et al, 1990;Starreveld & La Heij, 1995;Underwood, 1976).…”