Factors Determining Semantic Facilitation and Interference in the Cyclic Naming Paradigm
Open Access
- 1 January 2012
- journal article
- Published by Frontiers Media SA in Frontiers in Psychology
- Vol. 3, 38
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00038
Abstract
The cyclic naming paradigm, in which participants are slower to name pictures blocked by semantic category than pictures in an unrelated context, offers a window into the dynamics of the mapping between lexical concepts and words. Here we provide evidence for the view that incremental adjustments to the connection weights from semantics to lexical items provides an elegant explanation of a range of observations within the cyclic naming paradigm. Our principal experimental manipulation is to vary the within-category semantic distance among items that must be named together in a block. In the first set of experiments we find that naming latencies are, if anything, faster for within-category semantically close blocks compared to within-category semantically far blocks, for the first presentation of items. This effect can be explained by the fact that there will be more spreading activation, and thus greater priming at the lexical level, for within-category semantically close blocks than within-category semantically far blocks. We test this explanation by inserting intervening filler items (geometric shapes), and show as predicted, that while intervening unrelated trials abolish short-lived semantic priming effects, the long-lag interference effect that is characteristic of this paradigm is unaffected. These data place new constraints on explanations of the cyclic naming effect, and related phenomena, within a model of language production.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- Action-Related Properties Shape Object Representations in the Ventral StreamNeuron, 2007
- Semantic priming over unrelated trials: Evidence for different effects in word and picture namingMemory & Cognition, 2006
- Now You See it, Now you Don't: On Turning Semantic Interference Into Facilitation in a Stroop-Like TaskCortex, 2006
- Refractory effects in picture naming as assessed in a semantic blocking paradigmThe Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 2005
- DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracyBehavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 2003
- Effects of semantic context in the naming of pictures and wordsCognition, 2001
- A theory of lexical access in speech productionBehavioral and Brain Sciences, 1999
- A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speakingCognition, 1992
- Components of Stroop-like interference in picture namingMemory & Cognition, 1988
- Semantic facilitation with pictures and words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1988