DISCRETE SERIAL VERSUS CASCADED PROCESSING IN LEXICAL ACCESS IN SPEECH PRODUCTION - FURTHER EVIDENCE FROM THE COACTIVATION OF NEAR-SYNONYMS

In 5 cross-modal picture-word interference experiments, the authors in vestigated the time course of lexicalization in speech production. Par ticipants named pictures of simple objects while hearing distracter wo rds at different stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). Distracters were semantically related or phonologically related to either the picture n ame or its nontarget near-synonym. Compared with an unrelated control, effects from all distracters were obtained at a late SOA (150 ms) and vanished shortly thereafter (at SOA = 300 ms). These findings conflic t with the notion of an early selection of a single element. Rather, m ultiple lexical representations appear to remain active until late in the production process if a near-synonymous lexical competitor is pres ent. The authors discuss the scope of these observations and their rel evance for discrete two-stage and cascaded models of lexical access.