Adaptive Processing in Word Production: Evidence from Picture-Word-Interference Studies

Adaptive models of word production hold that lexical processing is shaped by recent production episodes. In particular, the models proposed by Howard et al. (2006) and Oppenheim et al. (2010) assume that the connection strength between semantic and lexical representations is updated continuously, on each use of a word. These changes make semantically related competitor words to a selected target word (e.g., “cherry” or “grape” for the target word “apple”) less accessible for future retrieval. We put this assumption to a novel test in two picture-word interference (PWI) experiments. The experiments looked at semantic interference (longer picture naming latencies in the presence of a semantically related distractor word compared to an unrelated distractor word; the effect is assumed to reflect the activation of competitor words to a target word) and its development across repeated naming. Across two times of measurement, semantically related distractor words (and their unrelated controls) were either identical (fixed target-distractor mapping, e.g., either distractor “cherry” or distractor “grape” for the target word “apple” at both times of measurement) or different (variable target-distractor mapping, e.g., distractor “cherry” at first time of measurement and distractor “grape” at second time of measurement or vice versa). Semantic interference was reduced at the second time of measurement, and this reduction was found for both fixed and variable target-distractor mapping. This generalization to new target-distractor combinations provides strong novel support for the notion of production dependent changes in lexical accessibility as captured by adaptive models of word production.