Picture–word interference reveals inhibitory effects of syllable frequency on lexical selection

Abstract

While previous research has shown that high syllable frequency can facilitate speech production at the level of phonological/phonetic encoding, little is known about its influence on prephonological processes, specifically lexical selection. The current study used a picture–word interference (PWI) task to (a) shed light on the stages of lexical access where syllable frequency is relevant, and (b) inform as to whether lexical selection is accomplished via competition among activated word options. Participants named pictures whose names had high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) first syllables while ignoring phonologically related (same first syllable) or unrelated distractor words that were presented simultaneously. Word frequency was also manipulated, as half of the targets were HF words, and half were LF words. Results revealed inhibitory syllable frequency effects in all conditions, such that targets with HF first syllables were named more slowly than targets with LF first syllables. However, inhibitory syllable frequency effects were exacerbated in conditions thought to reflect heightened lexical competition, specifically in the presence of phonologically related distractors and for targets with low word frequency. These findings reveal novel evidence for first-syllable frequency effects on lexical selection and offer further support for models proposing delays at lexical selection due to activation of nontarget competitors.

Keywords:

• Speech production
• Syllable frequency
• Picture–word interference
• Lexical selection
• Word frequency

This research was supported by a William Orr Dingwall Neurolinguistics Dissertation Fellowship awarded to the first author. We are very grateful to Meredith Shafto for her assistance with the CELEX database and to Sean Hernandez, Anh-Thuy Le, Madelyn Hightower, and Adam Close for their assistance with data collection and response time coding. We also thank Katherine White for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Half of the distractors were nouns, and half were a different part of speech. The distractor part of speech manipulation was relevant for a different manuscript and is not discussed here.