Exploring the lexical competition and repetition priming effects in L2 verb generation

Lin Fan,Zhen Wang,Zhenqian Liu,Na Hong,Peter Walla

doi:10.1080/23311908.2018.1507307

Abstract

Word-generation tasks have been frequently used in behavioral and neuroimaging research to explore the mechanisms of semantic retrieval and competition during language production. In the current st...

Highlights

The nature and mechanisms underlying lexical selection is a hotly debated topic in the language production literature (Janssen & Caramazza, 2011)
Lexical selection is a highly demanding process involving complicated cognitive procedures. We argue that this contrast between L1 and L2 verb generation processing supports the view that L2 processing is more demanding in terms of basic cognitive processes such as the speed of processing and cognitive control, and is influenced by the speakers’ language proficiency (e.g., Francis et al, 2008, 2014; Gollan et al, 2005) and age of acquisition (AOA) (e.g., Canseco-Gonzalez et al, 2010)
Our results add to a growing body of empirical evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies highlighting the role of lexical competition, providing additional evidence to support the hypothesis that there is lexical competition in the word generation process for the selection of information among competing alternatives

Summary

Introduction

The nature and mechanisms underlying lexical selection is a hotly debated topic in the language production literature (Janssen & Caramazza, 2011). Many models have postulated that the retrieval of lexical entries from the mental lexicon is a competitive process involving the selection of a target word from a set of competing words activated simultaneously in language production (e.g., Dell, 1986; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999; Starreveld & La Heij, 1996). Others (e.g., “door”) may have several potential responses (e.g., “open”, “close”, “lock”) and none of which are dominant, high levels of competition are assumed to be involved in the process of generating associated verbs to these noun stimuli. We attempt to examine the lexical competition effects by comparing high- and low-selection demand conditions, with matched association strength (i.e., cue words with several potential responses without any clearly dominant one versus those with a clearly dominant response) (c.f. Crescentini et al, 2009; Persson et al, 2004) in the verb generation task

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Conclusion