Picture-word Interference Research Articles

Dissociable effects of motivation and expectancy on conflict processing: an fMRI study.

Previous studies suggest that both motivation and task difficulty expectations activate brain regions associated with cognitive control. However, it remains an open question whether motivational and cognitive determinants of control have similar or dissociable impacts on conflict processing on a neural level. The current study tested the effects of motivation and conflict expectancy on activity in regions related to processing of the target and the distractor information. Participants performed a picture-word interference task in which we manipulated the size of performance-dependent monetary rewards (level of motivation) and the ratio of congruent to incongruent trials within a block (level of conflict expectancy). Our results suggest that motivation improves conflict processing by facilitating task-relevant stimulus processing and task difficulty expectations mainly modulate the processing of distractor information. We conclude that motivation and conflict expectancy engage dissociable control strategies during conflict resolution.

The Role of Executive Function in the Semantic Comprehension Deficits of Stroke Aphasia and Semantic Dementia

The Role of Executive Function in the Semantic Comprehension Deficits of Stroke Aphasia and Semantic Dementia

Syllable and Segments Effects in Mandarin Chinese Spoken Word Production

Speaking involves stages of conceptual preparation, lemma selection, word-form encoding and articulation.Furthermore, process of word-form encoding can be divided into morphological encoding process, phonological encoding process and phonetic encoding. What is the function unit at the stage of word-form encoding remains a controversial issue in speech production theories. The present study investigated syllable and segments effects at the stages of phonological encoding, phonetic encoding, and articulation in Mandarin spoken word production.Using Picture-Word Interference(PWI) Paradigm, we compared the effects generated in immediately naming(experiment 1), delayed naming(experiment 2), and delayed naming combined with articulation suppression(experiment 3) tasks. Eighteen black and white line drawings were applied as stimuli, and their names were monosyllabic words. Each target picture was paired with four distractor words: A CVC-related(C:Consonant, V: Vowel) distractor word was chosen that shared a syllable which always differed in tone with the picture name(i.e., 羊 /yang2/ as target name- 央 /yang1/ as distractor word). A CV-related distractor word was chosen that shared the onset consonant and the core vowel with the picture name(i.e., 羊 /yang2/- 药 /yao4/). A VC-related distractor was chosen that shared the rhymes with the picture name(i.e., 羊 /yang2/- 让 /rang4/). An unrelated distractor was selected that stood in no obvious semantic, phonological or orthographic relation with the picture name.We found syllable and segments facilitation effects in immediate naming, whereas syllable and segments inhibition effects in a delayed naming and a combination task of delayed naming and articulation suppression.An immediate naming involves stages of phonological encoding, phonetic encoding, and articulation, a delayed naming involves articulation only, while a combination task of delayed naming and articulation suppression involves phonetic encoding and articulation processes.By comparing these effects among three tasks, we suggest that syllable and segments facilitation effects localized at the stage of phonological encoding, whereas syllable and segments inhibition effects localized at the stage of phonetic encoding and(or) articulation. These findings indicated that syllable plays a more important role in phonological encoding whereas segments play their roles in phonetic encoding and articulation for motor programming. Our findings provide support for Proximate Unit Principle and the assumption of independence of premotor-(phonological encoding) and motor stages(phonetic encoding and articulation).

Editorial: The production of speech sounds across languages

Editorial: The production of speech sounds across languages

Feature overlap slows lexical selection: evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

How does the presence of a categorically related word influence picture naming latencies? In order to test competitive and noncompetitive accounts of lexical selection in spoken word production, we employed the picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm to investigate how conceptual feature overlap influences naming latencies when distractors are category coordinates of the target picture. Mahon et al. (2007. Lexical selection is not by competition: A reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(3), 503-535. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.33.3.503 ) reported that semantically close distractors (e.g., zebra) facilitated target picture naming latencies (e.g., HORSE) compared to far distractors (e.g., whale). We failed to replicate a facilitation effect for within-category close versus far target-distractor pairings using near-identical materials based on feature production norms, instead obtaining reliably larger interference effects (Experiments 1 and 2). The interference effect did not show a monotonic increase across multiple levels of within-category semantic distance, although there was evidence of a linear trend when unrelated distractors were included in analyses (Experiment 2). Our results show that semantic interference in PWI is greater for semantically close than for far category coordinate relations, reflecting the extent of conceptual feature overlap between target and distractor. These findings are consistent with the assumptions of prominent competitive lexical selection models of speech production.

Lexical access in children with hearing loss or specific language impairment, using the cross-modal picture-word interference paradigm.

In this study we compared lexical access to spoken words in 25 deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs), 13 hard-of-hearing (HoH) children and 20 children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twenty-one age-matched typically developing children served as controls. The children with CIs and the HoH children in the present study had good speech perception abilities. We used a cross-modal picture-word interference paradigm to examine lexical access. Results showed that children with SLI revealed overall slower reaction times and produced more errors than the children with CIs, the HoH children, and the control children. Reaction times of children with CIs and the HoH children did not differ from those of the control children. Thus, problems with spoken language processing, as is the case in children with SLI, seem to affect lexical access more than limitations in auditory perception, as is the fundamental problem in children with hearing loss. We recommend that improvement of lexical access in children with SLI deserves specific attention in therapy and education.

Removing speech artifacts from electroencephalographic recordings during overt picture naming

A number of electroencephalography (EEG) studies have investigated the time course of brain activation during overt word production. The interpretation of their results is complicated by the fact that articulatory movements may mask the cognitive components of interest. The first aim of the present study was to investigate when speech artifacts occur during word production planning and what effects they have on the spatio-temporal neural activation pattern. The second aim was to propose a new method that strongly attenuates speech artifacts during overt picture naming and to compare it with existing methods. EEG and surface electromyograms (EMGs) of the lips were recorded while participants overtly named pictures in a picture–word interference paradigm. The comparison of the raw data with lip EMG and the comparison of source localizations of raw and corrected EEG data showed that speech artifacts occurred mainly from ~400ms post-stimulus onset, but some earlier artifacts mean that they occur much earlier than hitherto assumed. We compared previously used methods of speech artifacts removal (SAR) with a new method, which is based on Independent Component Analysis (SAR-ICA). Our new method clearly outperformed other methods. In contrast to other methods, there was only a weak correlation between the lip EMG and the corrected data by SAR-ICA. Also, only the data corrected with our method showed activation of cerebral sources consistent with meta-analyses of word production.

Processing different kinds of semantic relations in picture-word interference with non-masked and masked distractors.

Spoken production requires lexical selection, guided by the conceptual representation of the to-be-named target. Currently, the question whether lexical selection is subject to competition is hotly debated. In the picture-word interference task, manipulating the visibility of written distractor words provides important insights: clearly visible categorically related distractors cause interference whereas masked distractors induce facilitation (Finkbeiner and Caramazza, 2006). Now you see it, now you don't: On turning semantic interference into facilitation in a Stoop-like task. We explored the effect of distractor masking in more depth by investigating its interplay with different types of semantic overlap. Specifically, we contrasted categorical with associatively based relatedness. For the former, we replicated the polarity reversal in semantic effects dependent on whether distractors were masked or not. Post-experimental visibility tests showed that weak semantic facilitation with masked distractors did not depend on individual variability in participants' ability to perceive the distractors. Associatively related distractors showed facilitation with non-masked presentation, but little effect when masked. Overall, the results suggest that it is primarily distractor activation strength which determines whether semantic effects are facilitatory or interfering in PWI tasks.

The Separability of Morphological Processes from Semantic Meaning and Syntactic Class in Production of Single Words: Evidence from the Hebrew Root Morpheme.

In the present study we investigated to what extent the morphological facilitation effect induced by the derivational root morpheme in Hebrew is independent of semantic meaning and grammatical information of the part of speech involved. Using the picture-word interference paradigm with auditorily presented distractors, Experiment 1 compared the facilitation effect induced by semantically transparent versus semantically opaque morphologically related distractor words (i.e., a shared root) on the production latency of bare nouns. The results revealed almost the same amount of facilitation for both relatedness conditions. These findings accord with the results of the few studies that have addressed this issue in production in Indo-European languages, as well as previous studies in written word perception in Hebrew. Experiment 2 compared the root's facilitation effect, induced by morphologically related nominal versus verbal distractors, on the production latency of bare nouns. The results revealed a facilitation effect of similar size induced by the shared root, regardless of the distractor's part of speech. It is suggested that the principle that governs lexical organization at the level of morphology, at least for Hebrew roots, is form-driven and independent of semantic meaning. This principle of organization crosses the linguistic domains of production and written word perception, as well as grammatical organization according to part of speech.

The roles of shared vs. distinctive conceptual features in lexical access.

Contemporary models of spoken word production assume conceptual feature sharing determines the speed with which objects are named in categorically-related contexts. However, statistical models of concept representation have also identified a role for feature distinctiveness, i.e., features that identify a single concept and serve to distinguish it quickly from other similar concepts. In three experiments we investigated whether distinctive features might explain reports of counter-intuitive semantic facilitation effects in the picture word interference (PWI) paradigm. In Experiment 1, categorically-related distractors matched in terms of semantic similarity ratings (e.g., zebra and pony) and manipulated with respect to feature distinctiveness (e.g., a zebra has stripes unlike other equine species) elicited interference effects of comparable magnitude. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated the role of feature distinctiveness with respect to reports of facilitated naming with part-whole distractor-target relations (e.g., a hump is a distinguishing part of a CAMEL, whereas knee is not, vs. an unrelated part such as plug). Related part distractors did not influence target picture naming latencies significantly when the part denoted by the related distractor was not visible in the target picture (whether distinctive or not; Experiment 2). When the part denoted by the related distractor was visible in the target picture, non-distinctive part distractors slowed target naming significantly at SOA of −150 ms (Experiment 3). Thus, our results show that semantic interference does occur for part-whole distractor-target relations in PWI, but only when distractors denote features shared with the target and other category exemplars. We discuss the implications of these results for some recently developed, novel accounts of lexical access in spoken word production.

Do Part–Whole Relations Produce Facilitation in the Picture–Word Interference Task?

Three experiments used the picture-word interference task to evaluate competing models of lexical access in spoken word production. Both the presence of a part-whole relation and association between the target and the interfering word were manipulated. Part terms associated with targets produced facilitation at early stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; -300 ms in Experiment 1, -300 and -150 ms in Experiment 3), but not at SOA 0 ms. Otherwise, part terms tended to produce interference, with unassociated part terms producing a significant semantic interference effect (SIE) at SOA of 0 ms in Experiment 1, and a similar trend in Experiment 3. Experiment 2 replicated the materials and procedure of Costa, Alario, and Caramazza ( 2005 , Experiment 2. On the categorical nature of the semantic interference effect in the picture-word interference paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(1), 125-131), yet failed to find any semantic facilitation at SOA 0 ms. We propose that these findings are consistent with lexical competition accounts of SIE but difficult to explain in terms of the plausibility of the interfering words as responses to the target.

Semantic gradients in picture-word interference tasks: is the size of interference effects affected by the degree of semantic overlap?

We report two experiments attempting to identify the role of semantic relatedness in picture-word interference studies. Previously published data sets have rendered results which directly contradict each other, with one study suggesting that the stronger the relation between picture and distractor, the more semantic interference is obtained, and another study suggesting the opposite pattern. We replicated the two key experiments with only minor procedural modifications, and found semantic interference effects in both. Critically, these were largely independent of the strength of semantic overlap. Additionally, we attempted to predict individual interference effects per target picture, via various measures of semantic overlap, which also failed to account for the effects. From our results it appears that semantic interference effects in picture-word tasks are similarly present for weakly and strongly overlapping combinations. Implications are discussed in the light of the recent debate on the role of competition in lexical selection.

Multi-level processing of phonetic variants in speech production and visual word processing: evidence from Mandarin lexical tones

Two picture–word interference experiments provide new evidence on the nature of phonological processing in speech production and visual word processing. In both experiments, responses were significantly faster either when distractor and target matched in tone category, but had different overt realisations (toneme condition) or when target and distractor matched in overt realisation, but mismatched in tone category (contour condition). Tone 3 sandhi is an allophone of Beijing Mandarin Tone 3 (T3). Its contour is similar to another tone, Tone 2. In Experiment 1, sandhi picture naming was faster with contour (Tone 2) and toneme (low Tone 3) distractors, compared to control distractors. This indicates both category and context-specific representations are activated in sandhi word production. In Experiment 2, both contour (Tone 2) and toneme (low Tone 3) picture naming was facilitated by visually presented sandhi distractors, compared to controls, evidence that category and context-specific instantiated representations are automatically activated during processing of visually presented words. Combined, the results point to multi-level processing of phonology, whether words are overtly produced or processed visually. Interestingly, there were differences in the time course of effects.

Picture–Word Interference Reveals Inhibitory Effects of Syllable Frequency on Lexical Selection

While previous research has shown that high syllable frequency can facilitate speech production at the level of phonological/phonetic encoding, little is known about its influence on prephonological processes, specifically lexical selection. The current study used a picture-word interference (PWI) task to (a) shed light on the stages of lexical access where syllable frequency is relevant, and (b) inform as to whether lexical selection is accomplished via competition among activated word options. Participants named pictures whose names had high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) first syllables while ignoring phonologically related (same first syllable) or unrelated distractor words that were presented simultaneously. Word frequency was also manipulated, as half of the targets were HF words, and half were LF words. Results revealed inhibitory syllable frequency effects in all conditions, such that targets with HF first syllables were named more slowly than targets with LF first syllables. However, inhibitory syllable frequency effects were exacerbated in conditions thought to reflect heightened lexical competition, specifically in the presence of phonologically related distractors and for targets with low word frequency. These findings reveal novel evidence for first-syllable frequency effects on lexical selection and offer further support for models proposing delays at lexical selection due to activation of nontarget competitors.

Deeper insights into semantic relations: An fMRI study of part-whole and functional associations

Cognitive neuroscience research on semantics recognizes a distinction between categorical and associated relations. However, associations can be divided further, such as into part-whole and functional relations. We investigated the neural basis of both relations using a picture–word interference task in an fMRI study. While the left supramarginal gyrus and the right inferior temporal sulcus were activated by part-whole over functional relations, the same applies to the right parahippocampal complex contrasting the functional over part-whole relations. The small effect sizes of our analyses have to be interpreted with caution. While the parahippocampal complex might reflect global scene processing across objects, the inferior temporal sulcus might be involved in the perceptual encoding of object related knowledge and the supramarginal gyrus might represent a convergence zone which implements within object related perceptual features. The current study gives a first indication that the neural bases for part-whole and functional relations seem to be distinguishable.

Inter-subject variability modulates phonological advance planning in the production of adjective-noun phrases

The literature on advance phonological planning in adjective-noun phrases (NPs) presents diverging results: while many experimental studies suggest that the entire NP is encoded before articulation, other results favor a span of encoding limited to the first word. Although cross-linguistic differences in the structure of adjective-NPs may account for some of these contrasting results, divergences have been reported even among similar languages and syntactic structures. Here we examined whether inter-individual differences account for variability in the span of phonological planning in the production of French NPs, where previous results indicated encoding limited to the first word. The span of phonological encoding is tested with the picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm using phonological distractors related to the noun or to the adjective of the NPs. In Experiment 1, phonological priming effects were limited to the first word in adjective NPs whichever the position of the adjective (pre-nominal or post-nominal). Crucially, phonological priming effects on the second word interacted with speakers' production speed suggesting different encoding strategies for participants. In Experiment 2, we tested this hypothesis further with a larger group of participants. Results clearly showed that slow and fast initializing participants presented different phonological priming patterns on the last element of adjective-NPs: while the first word was primed by a distractor for all speakers, only the slow speaker group presented a priming effect on the second element of the NP. These results show that the span of phonological encoding is modulated by inter-individual strategies: in experimental paradigms some speakers plan word by word whereas others encode beyond the initial word. We suggest that the diverging results reported in the literature on advance phonological planning may partly be reconciled in light of the present results.

The Optimal Size of Material in Psychological Experiment: The Applications of Multivariate Generalizability Theory

The validity and reliability must be guaranteed to any psychological experiment. The size of experiment material is a critical factor that will significantly affect the results of experiment. This paper aims to study the selection of optimal size of the psychological experiment material under the frame of multivariate generalizability theory. The results show that, with the IAT experiment, 50 will be the optimal size of each combined tasks, and the reliability will be 0.905; with the Picture-word Interference Paradigm, when the material size is about 48, the reliability will be 0.954; with the Cue Paradigm, when the number of valid cue is 50%, the optimum size of valid cue and invalid cue is about 35, and the reliability will be 0.973. This study shows that MGT can help us to select an optimal size of the psychological experiment material.

The local-global dimension in cognitive control after left lateral prefrontal cortex damage: Evidence from the verbal and the non-verbal domain

The local-global dimension in cognitive control after left lateral prefrontal cortex damage: Evidence from the verbal and the non-verbal domain

About the locus of the distractor frequency effect: Evidence from the production of clitic pronouns

In this study, we report results from two experiments in which pictures were shown with superimposed distractors that varied along two dimensions: frequency (high vs. low) and semantic relation with respect to the picture (related vs. unrelated). In one condition of Experiment 1, participants named pictures with a noun utterance; in the other condition of Experiment 1 and in Experiment 2 participants named pictures with a pronominal utterance. Low frequency distractor words produced greater interference with respect to high frequency words in noun production, but not in pronoun production. Critically, a semantic interference effect, greater interference in the semantically related than unrelated condition, was reported in both experiments, suggesting that distractor words were equally processed in both noun and pronoun conditions. These results are discussed in the context of current models of picture–word interference.

To what extent do we process the nondominant object in a morphed figure? Evidence from a picture–word interference task

To investigate to what extent response candidates are processed during visual object categorisation, two picture–word interference tasks were conducted in which the effects of different types of distractor words on object naming were examined. Distractor words were related to the dominant or the nondominant object in a morphed figure. We assume both the dominant and nondominant object to be response candidates during response competition. The distractor words were identical (dog-dog), semantically related (cow-dog), or unrelated (spoon-dog) to the dominant or nondominant object. It was found that in relation to the dominant object in a morphed figure identical distractors facilitated naming, whereas semantically related distractors caused interference indicating a general semantic interference effect. Moreover, in relation to the nondominant object identical words interfered with naming, whereas semantically related words only interfered with naming when they were response set members. Therefore, identical words in general influenced the activation of the nondominant response candidate, whereas semantically related words only did so under restricted conditions. The latter will be discussed in terms of short-term memory load. Overall, we conclude that the nondominant response candidate is processed up to the perceptual level.