When more is less: A counterintuitive effect of distractor frequency in the picture-word interference paradigm.

Abstract

Pictures were shown with superimposed word distractors of high and low frequency. Low-frequency distractors produced greater interference on picture naming than did high-frequency distractors. This distractor frequency effect was not affected by manipulations that facilitated or hindered distractor recognition. Interference was reduced for distractors that were read aloud several times prior to being shown in the picture-naming task. Together these findings suggest that the distractor frequency effect has its locus at some stage of lexical access for production. Other findings further constrain hypotheses about which level of speech production is involved in the effect. The distractor frequency effect has implications for models of lexical processing in speaking as well as for accounts of picture-word interference and the frequency effect.

Activation cascading in sign production.

“…To the extent that the advantage for iconic signs reflects a stronger activation of phonology, we can anticipate an equally stronger activation of the phonology of distractors whose signs are iconic. Furthermore, in line with accounts proposing that a greater activation of distractor phonology leads to a faster exclusion of the distractor response and therefore a faster selection of the target response (Finkbeiner & Caramazza;Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003;Mahon, Costa, Peterson, Vargas & Caramazza, 2007), signed responses would be faster for distractor with iconic signs.…”

“…Exclusion mechanisms have been proposed to explain various forms of interference induced in spoken word production by the simultaneous presentation of words or picture distractors, and specifically to account for the finding of reduced interference with strongly activated distractors (Finkbeiner & Caramazza;Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003;Mahon, Costa, Peterson, Vargas & Caramazza, 2007). This is a problematic finding for alternative accounts of interference that do assume exclusion processes (e.g., Piai, Roelofs, & Schriefers, 2012;Starreveld, La Heij, & Verdonschot, 2013).…”

The locus of taboo context effects in picture naming

“…Consistent with a relatively late locus, phonological facilitation is observed reliably at zero and later SOAs with written distractors. Moreover, it has been shown to reduce the magnitude of both semantic interference and distractor frequency effects in PWI (e.g., Damian & Martin, 1999;Lupker, 1982;Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003;Starreveld & La Heij, 1996). We therefore investigated whether a phonological relation between target and distractor would also influence the taboo interference effect.…”

“…Conversely, when the distractor word is associatively or phonologically/orthographically related to the target picture (e.g., kennel-DOG; dock-DOG), naming latencies are faster than for unrelated words (i.e., a facilitation effect; Lupker, 1982;Schriefers et al, 1990;Starreveld & La Heij, 1996). Low-frequency (LF) distractor words unrelated to the target also slow picture naming more than high-frequency (HF) distractor words (Dhooge & Hartsuiker, 2010;Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003;Starreveld, La Heij, & Verdonschot, 2013). This phenomenon, termed the distractor frequency effect, is in line with slower colour naming of LF than HF words (Burt, 2002).…”

“…An alternative explanation to both monitoring and competitive lexical selection accounts of taboo interference is that differential naming latencies in the PWI paradigm reflect processing capacity constraints (see Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003): Reading a word is faster than naming a picture (Cattell, 1885, as cited in Levelt, 2013), so distractor words will be processed faster than target pictures. Therefore, delays in target naming will reflect the time required to process each type of distractor.…”