Abstract
Background: Producing a word in referential naming requires to select the right word in our mental lexicon among co-activated semantically related words. The mechanisms underlying semantic context effects during speech planning are still controversial, particularly for semantic facilitation which investigation remains under-represented in contrast to the plethora of studies dealing with interference. Our aim is to study the time-course of semantic facilitation in picture naming, using a picture-word “interference” paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs).Methods: We compared two different types of semantic relationships, associative and categorical, in a single word priming and a double word priming paradigm. The primes were presented visually with a long negative Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA), which is expected to cause facilitation.Results: Shorter naming latencies were observed after both associative and categorical primes, as compared to unrelated primes, and even shorter latencies after two primes. Electrophysiological results showed relatively late modulations of waveform amplitudes for both types of primes (beginning ~330 ms post picture onset with a single prime and ~275 ms post picture onset with two primes), corresponding to a shift in latency of similar topographic maps across conditions.Conclusion: The present results are in favor of a post-lexical locus of semantic facilitation for associative and categorical priming in picture naming and confirm that semantic facilitation is as relevant as semantic interference to inform on word production. The post-lexical locus argued here might be related to self-monitoting or/and to modulations at the level of word-form planning, without excluding the participation of strategic processes.
Highlights
In everyday conversations, we choose effortlessly the right words in our vast mental lexicon to communicate the meaning we intend to
Contrasting with the plethora of studies dealing with interference, only a few investigations adressed semantic facilitation effects; and yet, ‘‘natural’’ semantic contexts seem to be generally facilitative rather than interfering, as it is usually shown in semantic categorization tasks (Kuipers and La Heij, 2008; Hantsch et al, 2012), semantic priming tasks in speech perception (Lucas, 2000) and picture naming after a constraining sentential context (Griffin and Bock, 1998; Piai et al, 2014b, 2015)
The ASS condition led to a lower rate of errors, as compared to the unrelated condition (UNR) (z = 1.923, p = 0.05) and the CAT conditions (z = −2.014, p = 0.04), but there was no difference between UNR and CAT conditions (z = −0.094, p = 0.925)
Summary
We choose effortlessly the right words in our vast mental lexicon to communicate the meaning we intend to. Lexical selection is seen as a decisional process, during which we have to select the right ‘‘target’’ word among other semantically related ‘‘non-target’’ words. These co-activated non-target words can either create a facilitatory or an inhibitory context, ERP Signature of Semantic Facilitation respectively speeding up or slowing down speech planning (Roelofs, 1992, 2006; Chen and Mirman, 2012). Semantic interference effects (i.e., word production slowed down by an inhibitory semantic context) have received a lot of interest. Our aim is to study the timecourse of semantic facilitation in picture naming, using a picture-word “interference” paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs)
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