Models as hypothesis generators and models as roadmaps

In this reply to Kroll, Van Hell, Tokowicz and Green (this issue) we present an analysis of the citations made to the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM). This gives us a quantitative summary of the current use of the RHM, showing that RHM has been used equally often to guide research in word recognition as in word production. We also question the claim that Brysbaert and Duyck's (this issue) focus on word recognition leaves RHM unscathed for the explanation of word production and the interactions between lexical and conceptual representations. For these research topics too, we feel that more progress will be made by adapting computational monolingual models to the bilingual situation rather than by trying to understand the findings from the RHM framework

Concreteness and word production

Two experiments are reported that investigated the effect of concreteness on the ability to generate words to fit sentence contexts. When participants attempted to retrieve words from dictionary definitions in Experiment 1, abstract words were associated with more omissions and more alternates than were concrete words. These findings are consistent with the view that the semantic-lexical weights in the word production system are weaker for abstract than for concrete words. We found no evidence that greater competition from semantic neighbors was an additional reason why abstract words were harder to produce. Participants also reported more positive tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) when attempting to produce abstract words from their definitions, consistent with more phonological retrieval problems for abstract than for concrete words. In Experiment 2, participants attempted to generate words to fit into a sentence that described a specific event. The difference between the numbers of abstract and concrete words recalled was significantly smaller in the event condition than in the definition condition, and evidence no longer emerged of greater phonological retrieval failure for abstract words. Overall, the results are consistent with the view that the semantic-lexical weights, but not the lexical-phonological weights, are weaker for abstract than for concrete words in the word production system. © 2012 Psychonomic Society, Inc

ERP correlates of word production before and after stroke in an aphasic patient

No abstract available

The Spatial and Temporal Signatures of Word Production Components: A Critical Update

In the first decade of neurocognitive word production research the predominant approach was brain mapping, i.e., investigating the regional cerebral brain activation patterns correlated with word production tasks, such as picture naming and word generation. Indefrey and Levelt (2004) conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of word production studies that used this approach and combined the resulting spatial information on neural correlates of component processes of word production with information on the time course of word production provided by behavioral and electromagnetic studies. In recent years, neurocognitive word production research has seen a major change toward a hypothesis-testing approach. This approach is characterized by the design of experimental variables modulating single component processes of word production and testing for predicted effects on spatial or temporal neurocognitive signatures of these components. This change was accompanied by the development of a broader spectrum of measurement and analysis techniques. The article reviews the findings of recent studies using the new approach. The time course assumptions of Indefrey and Levelt (2004) have largely been confirmed requiring only minor adaptations. Adaptations of the brain structure/function relationships proposed by Indefrey and Levelt (2004) include the precise role of subregions of the left inferior frontal gyrus as well as a probable, yet to date unclear role of the inferior parietal cortex in word production

Cascadedness in Chinese written word production

In written word production, is activation transmitted from lexical-semantic selection to orthographic encoding in a serial or cascaded fashion? Very few previous studies have addressed this issue, and the existing evidence comes from languages with alphabetic orthographic systems. We report a study in which Chinese participants were presented with coloured line drawings of objects and were instructed to write the name of the colour while attempting to ignore the object. Significant priming was found when on a trial, the written response shared an orthographic radical with the written name of the object. This finding constitutes clear evidence that task-irrelevant lexical codes activate their corresponding orthographic representation, and hence suggests that activation flows in a cascaded fashion within the written production system. Additionally, the results speak to how the time interval between processing of target and distractor dimensions affects and modulates the emergence of orthographic facilitation effects

The influence of spelling on phonological encoding in word reading, object naming, and word generation

Does the spelling of a word mandatorily constrain spoken word production, or does it do so only when spelling is relevant for the production task at hand? Damian and Bowers (2003) reported spelling effects in spoken word production in English using a prompt–response word generation task. Preparation of the response words was disrupted when the responses shared initial phonemes that differed in spelling, suggesting that spelling constrains speech production mandatorily. The present experiments, conducted in Dutch, tested for spelling effects using word production tasks in which spelling was clearly relevant (oral reading in Experiment 1) or irrelevant (object naming and word generation in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively). Response preparation was disrupted by spelling inconsistency only with the word reading, suggesting that the spelling of a word constrains spoken word production in Dutch only when it is relevant for the word production task at hand

Semantic effects in the word\u2013word interference task: a comment on Roelofs, Piai, and Schriefers (2013)

Roelofs, Piai, and Schriefers (Language and Cognitive Processes) test both the WEAVER++ model of word production and the response-exclusion account of performance in Stroop-like tasks against data from the word-word interference (WWI) task, and conclude that whereas the WEAVER++ successfully accounts for those data, the response-exclusion hypothesis fails. Here we show that once recent data from the WWI task are considered, both models fail

Lexical Selection in Multi-Word Production

In multi-word utterances, target words need to be selected in the context of other target words. In the present study, three hypotheses were tested that differed in their assumptions about whether the lexical selection mechanism considers the activation levels of the other target lexical representations, and whether it takes into account their grammatical class properties. Participants produced adjective + noun and noun + noun utterances in response to colored word and picture + word stimulus displays. In both types of utterances, the frequency of the first and second response was manipulated. The results revealed an effect of the frequency of the second response that did not depend on the utterance type, and additive effects for the frequency of the first and the second response in both utterance types. These results are interpreted in terms of a model of lexical selection that assumes that selection is non-competitive

Inhibitory from priming of spoken word production

Three experiments were designed to examine the effect on picture naming of the prior production of a word related in phonological form. In Experiment 1, the latency to produce Dutch words in response to pictures (e.g., hoed , hat) was longer following the production of a form-related word (e.g., hond , dog) in response to a definition on a preceding trial, than when the preceding definition elicited an unrelated word (e.g., kerk , church). Experiment 2 demonstrated that the inhibitory effect disappears when one unrelated word is produced intervening prime and target productions (e.g., hond-kerk-hoed ). The size of the inhibitory effect was not significantly affected by the frequency of the prime words or the target picture names. In Experiment 3, facilitation was observed for word pairs that shared offset segments (e.g., kurk-jurk , cork-dress), whereas inhibition was observed for shared onset segments (e.g., bloed-bloem , blood-flower). However, no priming was observed for prime and target words with shared phonemes but no mismatching segments (e.g., oom-boom , uncle-tree; hex-hexs , fence-witch). These findings are consistent with a process of phoneme competition during phonological encoding

Spoken word production: Processes and potential breakdown

Introduction: The processes of spoken word production have been a focus of interest for decades and this research has been summarised in several reviews (e.g., Friedmann, Biran, & Dotan, 2013; Nickels, 1997, 2001a,b; Wilshire, 2008). However, many questions remain unanswered and consequently spoken word production remains an area of research interest, informed by data from unimpaired and impaired adult language, as well as language development. Several theories of spoken language production have been proposed over the last half century, each differing slightly in levels of representation, processing steps, and activation flow. In this chapter, we focus on four of the most influential theories of spoken language production