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Abstract:
In a series of picture-word interference
experiments (Pechmann & Zerbst, 2002), subjects named
common objects presented as simple line drawings on a CRT
screen by producing simple noun phrases. Either slightly
before, simultaneously, or slightly after the picture appeared
on the screen they were presented with distractor words which
they were told to ignore. In the critical conditions
distractor words were either nouns or non-nouns (closed-class
words or adverbs). In the first experiment in which
subjects produced bare noun descriptions we did not obtain any
word class effect. Naming latencies were not affected by
the grammatical category of the distractor words. In the
following experiments we used a new variant of the picture-word
interference paradigm: The naming of the pictures was embedded
into the production of a simple sentence. Subjects first
saw a proper name and a verb in its infinitive form (e.g.,
<Peter beschreiben>, Peter describe). They were
asked to overtly pronounce the name and the verb in its
inflected form ("Peter beschreibt", Peter describes).
Shortly afterwards they saw the picture of an object and a
distractor word. Their task was to start naming the
picture as fast as possible together with the definite article
thereby completing the sentence fragment (e.g., "Peter
beschreibt den Apfel", Peter describes the apple). Using
this method we obtained highly significant word class
effects. Noun distractors interfered more strongly with
picture naming than did non-noun distractors. This held
for both visual and auditory presentation of the distractor
words. The interference effect showed up in a time window
where semantic interference can usually be observed, supporting
the claim that at an early stage of lexical access semantic and
syntactic activation processes overlap. In a final
experiment we compared the time course of activating semantic
and syntactic features of words in a within-subjects
design. The data demonstrate that the activation of word
class information precedes semantic effects. Furthermore,
semantic activation could still be observed when syntactic
activation had already declined. These findings are
problematic for the two-stage theory of lexical access as
proposed by Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer (1999).
References
Levelt, W.J.M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A.
(1999). A theory of lexical access in speech
production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22,
1-38.
Pechmann, Th. & Zerbst, D. (2002). The
activation of word class information during speech
production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 28 (1).
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