Does naming unicycle facilitate or hamper the production of clown? Lexical interference from associates in speech production revisited

Nadia Munoz (2011). Does naming unicycle facilitate or hamper the production of clown? Lexical interference from associates in speech production revisited Honours Thesis, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland.

       
Attached Files (Some files may be inaccessible until you login with your UQ eSpace credentials)
Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads
MunozNadia4071thesis2011.pdf MunozNadia4071thesis2011 application/pdf 909.74KB 12
Author Nadia Munoz
Thesis Title Does naming unicycle facilitate or hamper the production of clown? Lexical interference from associates in speech production revisited
School, Centre or Institute School of Psychology
Institution The University of Queensland
Publication date 2011-10-12
Thesis type Honours Thesis
Supervisor Dr Greig de Zubicaray
Total pages 55
Language eng
Subjects 1701 Psychology
Abstract/Summary The ability to name objects is fundamental to speech production. A number of experimental paradigms have been developed to inform and constrain theoretical accounts of the processes involved in speech production, including the semantic blocking paradigm. The semantic interference (SI) effect refers to the longer naming latencies observed for categorically related objects (e.g. horse, cat, lion) presented in homogenous vs. heterogeneous (or mixed) contexts when repeated over several blocks of items. Recently, a SI effect was also demonstrated for associatively related objects (e.g. deer, hunter, rifle). According to one account, the polarity of semantic context effects is dependent on a trade-off between conceptual priming and lexical competition, with the latter outweighing the former due to the blocking of related items in the case of the SI effect (Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2007). An alternative account attributes the effect to an incremental learning mechanism operating in the links between object features and names overcoming a repetition priming effect across blocks (Damian & Als, 2005; Oppenheim, Dell & Schwartz, 2010). Experiments 1 and 2 used variants of the semantic blocking paradigm to test hypotheses from these rival accounts, using novel, orthogonalised sets of stimuli that eliminated a confound involving shared features among associatively related objects in Abdel Rahman and Melinger‟s (2007) study. Objects were named in categorically homogenous, associatively homogenous, and heterogeneous conditions. In Experiment 1, context was manipulated such that the order in which the miniblocks of items were presented was randomised. This tested whether conceptual priming would occur for categorically or associatively related items in the absence of blocking, and whether repetition priming would occur over consecutive presentations. No significant differences in naming latencies were found between conditions. However, a significant repetition effect was found for the first three presentations, after which naming latencies did not decrease further. In Experiment 2, the full blocking manipulation was used per previous studies, such that miniblocks were presented consecutively within condition. Results revealed a strong associative facilitation effect yet, surprisingly, no SI effect for categorically related items. Overall, the results are partially supportive of an incremental learning account (Oppenheim, Dell & Schwartz, 2010) and are inconsistent with Abdel Rahman and Melinger's (2007) account.
Keyword Lexical interference
Processes involved in speech production
Semantic blocking paradigm

 
Citation counts: Google Scholar Search Google Scholar
Access Statistics: 44 Abstract Views, 12 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics
Created: Wed, 20 Jun 2012, 14:55:55 EST by Mrs Ann Lee on behalf of School of Psychology