PICTURE WORD INTERFERENCE INCREASES WITH TARGET SET SIZE

In the picture-word interference task the naming of a picture is hampe red by the presence of a distracter word that is to be ignored. Two ma in components of this interference effect can be distinguished: an int erference effect induced by an unrelated distracter word in comparison with a nonword control, and an additional interference effect that is due to a semantic similarity between target and distracter (called se mantic interference). We examine whether the size of these two interfe rence effects is affected by the number of different target pictures i n an experiment. The results show that both interference effects incre ase with the size of the target set. This finding has two implications . First, at an empirical level, the use of a relatively small number o f target pictures may account for remarkably small, or even nonsignifi cant, picture-word interference effects in a number of previous studie s. Second, at a theoretical level, the present finding is in accordanc e with a name-retrieval account of picture-word interference.