Tracing attention and the activation flow of spoken word planning using eye movements

The flow of activation from concepts to phonological forms within the word production system was examined in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed distractor pictures that were semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated. Eye movements and naming latencies were recorded. The distractor pictures affected the latencies of gaze shifting and vocal naming. The magnitude of the phonological effects increased linearly with latency, excluding lapses of attention as the cause of the effects. In Experiment 2, no distractor effects were obtained when both pictures were named. When pictures with superimposed distractor words were named or the words were read in Experiment 3, the words influenced the latencies of gaze shifting and picture naming, but the pictures yielded no such latency effects in word reading. The picture-word asymmetry was obtained even with equivalent reading and naming latencies. The picture-picture effects suggest that activation spreads continuously from concepts to phonological forms, whereas the picture-word asymmetry indicates that the amount of activation is limited and task dependent.     

Capacity demands of phoneme selection in word production: new evidence from dual-task experiments

Three dual-task experiments investigated the capacity demands of phoneme selection in picture naming. On each trial, participants named a target picture (Task 1) and carried out a tone discrimination task (Task 2). To vary the time required for phoneme selection, the authors combined the targets with phonologically related or unrelated distractor pictures (Experiment 1) or words, which were clearly visible (Experiment 2) or masked (Experiment 3). When pictures or masked words were presented, the tone discrimination and picture naming latencies were shorter in the related condition than in the unrelated condition, which indicates that phoneme selection requires central processing capacity. However, when the distractor words were clearly visible, the facilitatory effect was confined to the picture naming latencies. This pattern arose because the visible related distractor words facilitated phoneme selection but slowed down speech monitoring processes that had to be completed before the response to the tone could be selected.     

The Effects of Distractor Words on Naming Pictures at the Subordinate Level

Three experiments are reported in which participants are asked to name pictures at the subordinate level (e.g. POODLE) whilst ignoring a distractor word. In Experiment 1, the distractor words included the names of other exemplars from the same basic-level category (e.g. spaniel). Naming latencies were prolonged in this condition, relative to unrelated conditions. In Experiment 2, the distractor words included the correct basic level names (e.g. dog) and the names of related basic level objects (e.g. cat). Subordinate naming latencies were faster in these conditions than in unrelated conditions, suggesting that basic level names can be eliminated as competitors and that it can even be useful to have simultaneous activation of the correct basic level representation when retrieving subordinate names. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that when the names of subordinate objects from a related basic-level category (e.g. koala) are printed on objects, subordinate naming latencies are again delayed when compared with unrelated conditions. The results are discussed with reference to current models of object name retrieval.     

汉语口语词汇产生中的多重音韵激活：单词翻译任务的ERP研究

口语词汇产生过程中, 非目标词是否会产生音韵激活是独立两阶段模型和交互激活模型的争论焦点之一。研究运用事件相关电位技术, 考察了被试在翻译命名任务中是否受到背景图片音韵或语义干扰词的影响。行为反应时中未发现显著的音韵效应, 而语义效应显著, 表明非目标词不会产生音韵激活。事件相关电位的结果显示在目标单词呈现后的400~600 ms时间窗口中出现了显著的语义效应, 在600~700 ms时间窗口内出现了边缘显著的语义效应和音韵效应, 均表现为相关条件比无关条件波幅更正。上述结果表明在将英语翻译成汉语的过程中, 尽管在脑电上呈现出可能存在微弱的多重音韵激活, 但行为结果并不会显示出非目标项的音韵激活。研究结果支持了汉语口语词汇产生遵循独立两阶段模式的观点。     

语义相似性与类别大小对图-词干扰范式下语义效应的影响

采用基本水平命名和类别水平命名任务, 通过2个实验, 考察了图-词之间的语义相似性与类别大小对图-词干扰范式下语义效应的影响。实验1发现, 图片命名时间在语义相似性高的干扰词条件下显著快于在语义相似性低的干扰词条件下, 但这种效应只出现在基本水平命名任务中, 未出现在类别水平命名任务中。图-词之间的语义相似性高低对低熟悉图片命名影响大, 对高熟悉图片命名影响小。实验2显示, 语义关联的干扰词对图片的基本水平命名产生了语义干扰效应, 对图片的类别水平命名产生了语义促进效应。类别大小强化了语义效应：类别大, 图片的基本水平命名的语义干扰效应更大, 图片的类别水平命名的语义促进效应更强。整个研究表明, 图-词之间的语义关联的强度影响语义效应的方向, 图-词之间的语义关联的广度影响语义效应的强弱。需要结合多种理论来解释图-词之间的语义相似性和类别大小对图-词干扰范式下语义效应的影响。     

Does word frequency affect lexical selection in speech production?

We evaluated whether lexical selection in speech production is affected by word frequency by means of two experiments. In Experiment 1 participants named pictures using utterances with the structure “pronoun + verb + adjective”. In Experiment 2 participants had to perform a gender decision task on the same pictures. Access to the noun's grammatical gender is needed in both tasks, and therefore lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is required. However, retrieval of the phonological properties (lexeme retrieval) of the referent noun is not needed to perform the tasks. In both experiments we observed faster latencies for high-frequency pictures than for low-frequency pictures. This frequency effect was stable over four repetitions of the stimuli. Our results suggest that lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is sensitive to word frequency. This interpretation runs against the hypothesis that a word's frequency exerts its effects only at the level at which the phonological properties of words are retrieved.     

Does word frequency affect lexical selection in speech production?

We evaluated whether lexical selection in speech production is affected by word frequency by means of two experiments. In Experiment 1 participants named pictures using utterances with the structure “pronoun + verb + adjective”. In Experiment 2 participants had to perform a gender decision task on the same pictures. Access to the noun's grammatical gender is needed in both tasks, and therefore lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is required. However, retrieval of the phonological properties (lexeme retrieval) of the referent noun is not needed to perform the tasks. In both experiments we observed faster latencies for high-frequency pictures than for low-frequency pictures. This frequency effect was stable over four repetitions of the stimuli. Our results suggest that lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is sensitive to word frequency. This interpretation runs against the hypothesis that a word's frequency exerts its effects only at the level at which the phonological properties of words are retrieved.     

About the locus of the distractor frequency effect: Evidence from the production of clitic pronouns

In this study, we report results from two experiments in which pictures were shown with superimposed distractors that varied along two dimensions: frequency (high vs. low) and semantic relation with respect to the picture (related vs. unrelated). In one condition of Experiment 1, participants named pictures with a noun utterance; in the other condition of Experiment 1 and in Experiment 2 participants named pictures with a pronominal utterance. Low frequency distractor words produced greater interference with respect to high frequency words in noun production, but not in pronoun production. Critically, a semantic interference effect, greater interference in the semantically related than unrelated condition, was reported in both experiments, suggesting that distractor words were equally processed in both noun and pronoun conditions. These results are discussed in the context of current models of picture–word interference.     

Central bottleneck influences on the processing stages of word production

Does producing a word slow performance of a concurrent, unrelated task? In 2 experiments, 108 participants named pictures and discriminated tones. In Experiment 1, pictures were named after cloze sentences; the durations of the word-production stages of lemma and phonological word-form selection were manipulated with high- and low-constraint cloze sentences and high- and low-frequency-name pictures, respectively. In Experiment 2, pictures were presented with simultaneous distractor words; the durations of lemma and phoneme selection were manipulated with conceptually and phonologically related distractors. All manipulations, except the phoneme-selection manipulation, delayed tone-discrimination responses as much as picture-naming responses. These results suggest that early word-production stages--lemma and phonological word-form selection--are subject to a central processing bottleneck, whereas the later stage--phoneme selection--is not.     

Stroop effects in bilingual translation

In two experiments, bilinguals proficient in English and Spanish translated words from one language to the other. In each experiment, following the target word to be translated, distractor words were presented after a short (200-msec) or long (500-msec) stimulus onset asynchrony. In Experiment 1, the distractor words appeared in the language of production and were related to the meaning or form of the spoken translation. The results replicated past studies in demonstrating that semantically related distractor words produced Stroop-type interference, whereas form-related distractor words produced facilitation. In Experiment 2, the distractors appeared in the language of input and were related to the meaning or form of the target word itself. In contrast to the results of Experiment 1, there were only marginal effects of the distractors on translation performance. These results suggest that language cues related to the nature of the input in translation may serve to reduce competition among lexical competitors during lexicalization. The contrast between these results and those in bilingual picture-word interference studies provides important constraints for models of language production and for claims about the locus of language selection.     

Processing segmental and prosodic information in Cantonese word production

Five experiments were conducted to investigate how subsyllabic, syllabic, and prosodic information is processed in Cantonese monosyllabic word production. A picture-word interference task was used in which a target picture and a distractor word were presented simultaneously or sequentially. In the first 3 experiments with visually presented distractors, null effects on naming latencies were found when the distractor and the picture name shared the onset, the rhyme, the tone, or both the onset and tone. However, significant facilitation effects were obtained when the target and the distractor shared the rhyme + tone (Experiment 2), the segmental syllable (Experiment 3), or the syllable + tone (Experiment 3). Similar results were found in Experiments 4 and 5 with spoken rather than visual distractors. Moreover, a significant facilitation effect was observed in the rhyme-related condition in Experiment 5, and this effect was not affected by the degree of phonological overlap between the target and the distractor. These results are interpreted in an interactive model, which allows feedback sending from the subsyllabic to the lexical level during the phonological encoding stage in Cantonese word production.     

Influences of spoken word planning on speech recognition

In 4 chronometric experiments, influences of spoken word planning on speech recognition were examined. Participants were shown pictures while hearing a tone or a spoken word presented shortly after picture onset. When a spoken word was presented, participants indicated whether it contained a prespecified phoneme. When the tone was presented, they indicated whether the picture name contained the phoneme (Experiment 1) or they named the picture (Experiment 2). Phoneme monitoring latencies for the spoken words were shorter when the picture name contained the prespecified phoneme compared with when it did not. Priming of phoneme monitoring was also obtained when the phoneme was part of spoken nonwords (Experiment 3). However, no priming of phoneme monitoring was obtained when the pictures required no response in the experiment, regardless of monitoring latency (Experiment 4). These results provide evidence that an internal phonological pathway runs from spoken word planning to speech recognition and that active phonological encoding is a precondition for engaging the pathway.     

Where and how morphologically complex words interplay with naming pictures

Two picture-word experiments are reported in which a delay of 7 to 10 was introduced between distractor and picture. Distractor words were either derived words (Experiment 1) or compounds (Experiment 2), morphologically related to the picture name. In both experiments, the position of morphological overlap between distractor (e.g., rosebud vs tea-rose) and picture name (rose) was manipulated. Clear facilitation of picture naming latencies was obtained when pictures were paired with morphological distractors, and effects were independent of distractor type and position of overlap. The results are evaluated against "full listing" and "decomposition" approaches of morphological representation.     

Recognition latency for pictures and words as a function of encoded-feature similarity.

In separate trials of a same-different recognition task, a single target item presented as either a picture or a word was followed after a 30-sec delay by a single test item, either a picture or a word. Test items were either nominal matches for the target (same) or one of five related distractor items. Distractors were selected to resemble the target item on one of five dimensions: orthographic, acoustic, conceptual (functional or categorical), schematic (similar in shape), or neutral. Same-different reaction times were found to vary systematically as a function of depiction mode of target and/or test items and by distractor type. Verbally related distractors (orthographic and acoustic) produced longer reaction times when target or test items or both were presented as printed words. When target or test items were presented as pictures, schematic and conceptual distractors produced the longest rejection latencies.     

言语产生中音韵编码的计划广度:来自图-词干扰范式的证据

采用图-词干扰范式,要求被试口语产生包含三个名词的句子,同时听觉呈现干扰刺激并操纵其与各个名词的语音相关性,通过与无关刺激相比,与各个名词语音相关的干扰刺激产生的语音效应,探讨句子产生中音韵编码的计划广度,同时检验音韵编码的层级激活假设。结果发现,只有第一个名词上出现了语音促进效应,第二和第三个名词上既无语音促进,也无语音干扰。该结果与层级激活假设相悖,表明句子产生中音韵编码的计划广度为第一个韵律词。     

Is Phonological Encoding in Naming Influenced by Literacy?

We examined phonological priming in illiterate adults, using a cross-modal picture-word interference task. Participants named pictures while hearing distractor words at different Stimulus Onset Asynchronies (SOAs). Ex-illiterates and university students were also tested. We specifically assessed the ability of the three populations to use fine-grained, phonemic units in phonological encoding of spoken words. In the phoneme-related condition, auditory words shared only the first phoneme with the target name. All participants named pictures faster with phoneme-related word distractors than with unrelated word distractors. The results thus show that phonemic representations intervene in phonological output processes independently of literacy. However, the phonemic priming effect was observed at a later SOA in illiterates compared to both ex-illiterates and university students. This may be attributed to differences in speed of picture identification.     

Homophonic context effects when naming Japanese kanji: evidence for processing costs?

The current study investigated the effects of phonologically related context pictures on the naming latencies of target words in Japanese and Chinese. Reading bare words in alphabetic languages has been shown to be rather immune to effects of context stimuli, even when these stimuli are presented in advance of the target word (e.g., Glaser & Düngelhoff, 1984 ; Roelofs, 2003 ). However, recently, semantic context effects of distractor pictures on the naming latencies of Japanese kanji (but not Chinese hànzì) words have been observed (Verdonschot, La Heij, & Schiller, 2010 ). In the present study, we further investigated this issue using phonologically related (i.e., homophonic) context pictures when naming target words in either Chinese or Japanese. We found that pronouncing bare nouns in Japanese is sensitive to phonologically related context pictures, whereas this is not the case in Chinese. The difference between these two languages is attributed to processing costs caused by multiple pronunciations for Japanese kanji.     

Irrelevant sound disrupts speech production: Exploring the relationship between short-term memory and experimentally induced slips of the tongue

To explore the relationship between short-term memory and speech production, we developed a speech error induction technique. The technique, which was adapted from a Japanese word game, exposed participants to an auditory distractor word immediately before the utterance of a target word. In Experiment 1, the distractor words that were phonologically similar to the target word led to a greater number of errors in speaking the target than did the dissimilar distractor words. Furthermore, the speech error scores were significantly correlated with memory span scores. In Experiment 2, memory span scores were again correlated with the rate of the speech errors that were induced from the task-irrelevant speech sounds. Experiment 3 showed a strong irrelevant-sound effect in the serial recall of nonwords. The magnitude of the irrelevant-sound effects was not affected by phonological similarity between the to-be-remembered nonwords and the irrelevant-sound materials. Analysis of recall errors in Experiment 3 also suggested that there were no essential differences in recall error patterns between the dissimilar and similar irrelevant-sound conditions. Weproposed two different underlying mechanisms in immediate memory, one operating via the phonological short-term memory store and the other via the processes underpinning speech production.     

Strategic reliance on phonological mediation in lexical access

The present study investigated strategic variation in reliance on phonological mediation in visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, semantically related or unrelated word primes preceded word, pseudohomophone (e.g.,trane), or nonpseudohomophone (e.g.,trank) targets in a lexical decision task. Semantic priming effects were found for words, and response latencies to pseudohomophones were longer in related than in unrelated prime conditions. In Experiment 2, related or unrelated word primes preceded word or pseudohomophone targets. A relatedness effect was found for words, although it was significant at a 600-msec prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and not at a 200-msec SOA. There was no relatedness effect for pseudohomophones. Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 2, except that pseudohomophones were replaced by nonpseudohomophonic orthographic controls. Facilitation effects for related target words were greater in Experiment 3 than in Experiment 2. The results reflect apparent variations in the expectation that a related prime reliably indicates that a target is a word. Although reliance on phonological mediation might be strategically contingent, there could be a brief time period in which phonologically mediated lexical access occurs automatically. Whether phonological information is maintained or suppressed subsequently depends on its overall usefulness for the task.     

Semantic interference in a delayed naming task: evidence for the response exclusion hypothesis

In 2 experiments participants named pictures of common objects with superimposed distractor words. In one naming condition, the pictures and words were presented simultaneously on every trial, and participants produced the target response immediately. In the other naming condition, the presentation of the picture preceded the presentation of the distractor by 1,000 ms, and participants delayed production of their naming response until distractor word presentation. Within each naming condition, the distractor words were either semantic category coordinates of the target pictures or unrelated. Orthogonal to this manipulation of semantic relatedness, the frequency of the pictures' names was manipulated. The authors observed semantic interference effects in both the immediate and delayed naming conditions but a frequency effect only in the immediate naming condition. These data indicate that semantic interference can be observed when target picture naming latencies do not reflect the bottleneck at the level of lexical selection. In the context of other findings from the picture-word interference paradigm, the authors interpret these data as supporting the view that the semantic interference effect arises at a postlexical level of processing.