Exploring phonological encoding through repeated segments

Abstract

Five experiments explored the influence of repeated phonemes on the production of short utterances. In Experiment 1 coloured object naming showed faster latencies when colour and object started with the same phoneme (‘green goat’) than when they did not; the opposite was found when colour and object were named on consecutive trials (‘green’ – ‘goat’). Experiments 2 and 3 focused on adjective-noun phrases and showed no effect of repeated phonemes on either acoustical duration of speeded responses, or latencies in a delayed variant of the task, suggesting a higher-level – rather than articulatory – locus of the effect. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that the facilitation induced by repeated segments is not specific to word onset (‘green chain’) and is independent of whether or not the repeated phonemes occupy the same within-word position (‘green flag’). These results indicate that in the production of multiple words, word forms are concurrently activated and evoke phonological segments represented in a position-nonspecific manner.