Effortful retrieval practice effects in lexical access: a role for semantic competition

ABSTRACT

Word retrieval difficulty (lexical access deficit) is prevalent in aphasia. Studies have shown that practice retrieving names from long-term memory (retrieval practice) improves future name retrieval for production in people with aphasia (PWA), particularly when retrieval is effortful. To explicate such effects, this study examined a potential role for semantic competition in the learning mechanism(s) underlying effortful retrieval practice effects in lexical access in 6 PWA. Items were trained in a blocked-cyclic naming task, in which repeating sets of pictures drawn from semantically-related versus unrelated categories underwent retrieval practice with feedback. Naming accuracy was lower for the related items at training, but next-day accuracy did not differ between the conditions. However, greater semantic-relatedness of an item to its set in the related condition was associated with lower accuracy at training but higher accuracy at test. Relevance to theories of lexical access and implications for naming treatment in aphasia are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Lexical access
• retrieval practice
• semantic blocking
• naming impairment
• aphasia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Erica Johns for her contribution to data collection and data coding. We also thank Myrna Schwartz, Gary Dell, and members of the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI) Language and Learning Lab for their feedback on this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Due to experimenter error, one participant received training on three homogeneous sets and one mixed set in Round 1, and three mixed sets and one homogeneous set in Round 2.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant number R01 DC015516-01A1] and the Albert Einstein Society, Philadelphia, PA awarded to Erica L. Middleton.