Lexical selection is not by competition: a reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm

Abstract

The dominant view in the field of lexical access in speech production maintains that selection of a word becomes more difficult as the levels of activation of nontarget words increase--selection by competition. The authors tested this prediction in two sets of experiments. First, the authors show that participants are faster to name pictures of objects (e.g., "bed") in the context of semantically related verb distractors (e.g., sleep) compared with unrelated verb distractors (e.g., shoot). In the second set of experiments, the authors show that target naming latencies (e.g., "horse") are, if anything, faster for within--category semantically close distractor words (e.g., zebra) than for within--category semantically far distractor words (e.g., whale). In the context of previous research, these data ground a new empirical generalization: As distractor words become semantically closer to the target concepts--all else being equal--target naming is facilitated. This fact means that lexical selection does not involve competition, and consequently, that the semantic interference effect does not reflect a lexical level process. This conclusion has important implications for models of lexical access and interpretations of Stroop-like interference effects.