Concurrent speech disturbs word generation: Semantic, associative, and grammatical processes in picture naming: A pictureword interference study

Abstract

In pictureword interference (PWI), a picture of an object to be named is presented with a distracter word. Most PWI studies showed semantic interference between a target picture and distracter word (noun). Recently, Vigliocco et al. (2005) studied grammatical effect in naming a picture of action. They found that generation of an inflected form of an Italian verb was disturbed by a distracter in the same grammatical class. In experiment 1 of the present study, naming an object with an auditorily presented noun or verb distracter in Japanese was investigated, and grammatical class but not semantic effect was found, which is incongruent with previous findings. Analyzing the distracters revealed that familiarity of the verbs was lower than that of nouns, and half of nouns classified as semantically close were associative (e.g., garage versus car). In experiment 2, familiarity was matched across distracters, and association effect was examined separately. To see time course of interference, stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was changed from −300 to +200 ms. Again, grammatical effect was observed, and associative as well as semantic effect was found for negative SOAs. Possible factors producing grammatical and associative effects in PWI will be discussed cross-linguistically.