Decision latencies for phonological and semantic information in object identification

Several on-line studies in the literature have been cited in support of a t wo-stage model of name-retrieval in which semantic processing precedes and mediates access to phonology. Because of inconsistencies in prior studies a n off-line experiment was designed to provide converging evidence on this i ssue. An experiment is reported in which young and elderly adults were requ ired to give speeded judgments of whether a pictured object matched a named category, a named physical attribute, or a rhyming cue. Latencies for the young adults were fastest for category judgments and slowest for rhyming ju dgments. For the elderly adults physical attributes and rhyming judgments w ere equivalent. Results are discussed in terms of ''lemma'' theory in Objec t naming. (C) 1999 Academic Press.