Is lexical selection in spoken word production competitive? Introduction to the special issue on lexical competition in language production

Abstract

A common assumption in research on spoken word production is that lexical selection is a competition-based process among co-activated lexical representations. This assumption of competitive lexical selection has been challenged by an alternative account, which places competition at a postlexical response selection stage. A complex pattern of empirical findings from picture-word interference and other tasks has emerged which constrains current thinking about word production. In this article we provide an overview over the main positions, empirical findings, and put the various contributions to this Special Issue into a wider context. The theoretical debate is far from closed, but it has drawn attention to some critical points that we emphasise in this Editorial: The speech production process needs an element of competition, but this competition need not necessarily take place during lexical selection. Behavioural interference effects are caused by a combination of facilitation and interference, but there is discord about the processing levels at which these mechanisms are located. Finally, we stress the necessity to use findings from different experimental paradigms for theory-building and advocate a shift from the narrow focus on the picture-word paradigm that has dominated the theoretical discussion in this Special Issue and elsewhere.