Lexical selection is not by competition: Evidence from the blocked naming paradigm

Publication date: October 2014 Source:Journal of Memory and Language, Volume 76 Author(s): Eduardo Navarrete , Paul Del Prato , Francesca Peressotti , Bradford Z. Mahon A central issue in research on speech production is whether or not the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon is a competitive process. An important experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of lexical retrieval is the blocked naming paradigm, in which participants name pictures of objects that are grouped by semantic category (‘homogenous’ or ‘related’ blocks) or not grouped by semantic category (‘heterogeneous’ or ‘unrelated’ blocks). Typically, pictures are repeated multiple times (or cycles) within both related and unrelated blocks. It is known that participants are slower in related than in unrelated blocks when the data are collapsed over all within-block repetitions. This semantic interference effect, as observed in the blocked naming task, is the strongest empirical evidence for the hypothesis of lexical selection by competition. Here we show, contrary to the accepted view, that the default polarity of semantic context effects in the blocked naming paradigm is facilitation, rather than interference. In a series of experiments we find that interference arises only when items repeat within a block, and only because of that repetition: What looks to be ‘semantic interference’ in the blocked naming paradigm is actually less repetition priming in related compared to unrelat...
Source: Journal of Memory and Language - Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research