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

Adaptive lexical processing is a prominent concept in theorizing about speech production. Specifically, some current models include a mechanism that operates rapidly, after each use of a word, and makes semantically related competitor words less accessible for future retrieval. A recent article (Jescheniak et al., 2024) showed that semantic interference in the picture-word interference (PWI) task (longer picture naming latencies with a semantically related distractor word compared to a semantically unrelated distractor word; the effect is assumed to reflect the activation of competitor words) was reduced across repeated naming of a picture, even when novel distractor words were used. This finding supports the notion of adaptive lexical processing. The present study presents four new PWI experiments, all of which replicate the core finding of Jescheniak et al. and show that the reduction of semantic interference (a) contrasts with the non-reduction of phonological facilitation when semantic and phonological distractor conditions are counterbalanced (Experiment 1), (b) is also found when distractor words are presented visually rather than auditorily (Experiments 2 – 4), (c) replicates with different materials (Experiments 3 and 4). It also provides evidence that the reduction likely occurs in a continuous manner, although this evidence is not fully consistent (Experiments 3 and 4). Overall, this study provides further support for the notion of adaptive lexical processing in speech production and demonstrates that the picture-word interference task is an appropriate tool for investigating it.