Effect of sound similarity and word position on lexical selection

Abstract

Spoken word production research has shown that phonological information influences lexical selection. It remains unclear, however, whether this phonological information is specified for its phonological environment (e.g., word position) or its phonetic (allophonic) realisation. To examine this, two definition-naming experiments were performed during which subjects produced lexical targets (e.g., “balcony”) in response to the targets' definitions (“deck higher than a building's first floor”) after naming a series of phonologically related or unrelated primes. Subjects produced target responses significantly more often when the primes were phonologically related to the target, regardless of whether the phonologically related primes matched the target's word position or did not. For example, subjects were equally primed to produce the target “balcony” after the prime “ballast” or “unbalanced” relative to unrelated primes. Moreover, equal priming occurred irrespective of phonological environment or phonetic realisation. The results support models of spoken word production which include context-independent phonological representations.

Keywords:

• spoken word production
• phonological encoding
• lexical access
• phonological representations

Funding

This research was supported in part by NIH Grant [RO1 DC006220] from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Deafness.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This research was supported in part by NIH Grant [RO1 DC006220] from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Deafness.