skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Do taxonomic and associative relations affect word production in the same way?
Naming a picture is more difficult in the context of a taxonomically-related picture. Disagreement exists on whether non-taxonomic relations, e.g., associations, have similar or different effects on picture naming. Past work has reported facilitation, interference and null results but with inconsistent methodologies. We paired the same target word (e.g., cow) with unrelated (pen), taxonomically-related (bear), and associatively-related (milk) items in different blocks, as participants repeatedly named one of the two pictures in randomized order. Significant interference was uncovered for the same target item in the taxonomic vs. unrelated and associative blocks. There was no robust evidence of interference in the associative blocks. If anything, evidence suggested that associatively-related items marginally facilitated production. This finding suggests that taxonomic and associative relations have different effects on picture naming and has implications for theoretical models of lexical selection and, more generally, for the computations involved in mapping semantic features to lexical items.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1949631
PAR ID:
10195007
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
ISSN:
1069-7977
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Fitch, T. (Ed.)
    One of the major debates in the field of word production is whether lexical selection is competitive or not. For nearly half a century, semantic interference effectsin picture naming latencieshave beenclaimed as evidence for competitive (relative threshold) models of lexical selection,while semantic facilitation effects have beenclaimed as evidence for non-competitive (simple threshold) models instead.In this paper, we use a computational modelingapproach to comparethe consequences of competitive and noncompetitive selection algorithms for blocked cyclic picture naming latencies, combined with two approaches to representing taxonomic and thematic semantic features.We show thatalthough our simplemodel can capture both semantic interference and facilitation,the presence or absence of competition in the selection mechanism is unrelated to the polarity of these semantic effects.These results question the validity of prior assumptions and offer new perspectives on the origins of interference and facilitation in languageproduction. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract The organization of our knowledge about the world into an interconnected network of concepts linked by relations profoundly impacts many facets of cognition, including attention, memory retrieval, reasoning, and learning. It is therefore crucial to understand how organized semantic representations are acquired. The present experiment investigated the contributions of readily observable environmental statistical regularities to semantic organization in childhood. Specifically, we investigated whether co‐occurrence regularities with which entities or their labels more reliably occur together than with others (a) contribute to relations between concepts independently and (b) contribute to relations between concepts belonging to the same taxonomic category. Using child‐directed speech corpora to estimate reliable co‐occurrences between labels for familiar items, we constructed triads consisting of a target, a related distractor, and an unrelated distractor in which targets and related distractors consistently co‐occurred (e.g., sock‐foot), belonged to the same taxonomic category (e.g., sock‐coat), or both (e.g., sock‐shoe). We used an implicit, eye‐gaze measure of relations between concepts based on the degree to which children (N = 72, age 4–7 years) looked at related versus unrelated distractors when asked to look for a target. The results indicated that co‐occurrence both independently contributes to relations between concepts and contributes to relations between concepts belonging to the same taxonomic category. These findings suggest that sensitivity to the regularity with which different entities co‐occur in children's environments shapes the organization of semantic knowledge during development. Implications for theoretical accounts and empirical investigations of semantic organization are discussed. 
    more » « less
  3. Picture-naming tasks provide critical data for theories of lexical representation and retrieval and have been performed successfully in sign languages. However, the specific influences of lexical or phonological factors and stimulus properties on sign retrieval are poorly understood. To examine lexical retrieval in American Sign Language (ASL), we conducted a timed picture-naming study using 524 pictures (272 objects and 251 actions). We also compared ASL naming with previous data for spoken English for a subset of 425 pictures. Deaf ASL signers named object pictures faster and more consistently than action pictures, as previously reported for English speakers. Lexical frequency, iconicity, better name agreement, and lower phonological complexity each facilitated naming reaction times (RT)s. RTs were also faster for pictures named with shorter signs (measured by average response duration). Target name agreement was higher for pictures with more iconic and shorter ASL names. The visual complexity of pictures slowed RTs and decreased target name agreement. RTs and target name agreement were correlated for ASL and English, but agreement was lower for ASL, possibly due to the English bias of the pictures. RTs were faster for ASL, which we attributed to a smaller lexicon. Overall, the results suggest that models of lexical retrieval developed for spoken languages can be adopted for signed languages, with the exception that iconicity should be included as a factor. The open-source picture-naming data set for ASL serves as an important, first-of-its-kind resource for researchers, educators, or clinicians for a variety of research, instructional, or assessment purposes. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract As they process complex linguistic input, language comprehenders must maintain a mapping between lexical items (e.g., morphemes) and their syntactic position in the sentence. We propose a model of how these morpheme‐position bindings are encoded, maintained, and reaccessed in working memory, based on working memory models such as “serial‐order‐in‐a‐box” and its SOB‐Complex Span version. Like those models, our model of linguistic working memory derives a range of attested memory interference effects from the process of binding items to positions in working memory. We present simulation results capturing similarity‐based interference as well as item distortion effects. Our model provides a unified account of these two major classes of interference effects in sentence processing, attributing both types of effects to an associative memory architecture underpinning linguistic computation. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Two types of discontinuous morphemes are thought to be the basic building blocks of words in Semitic languages: roots and templates. However, the role of these morphemes in lexical access and representation is debated. Priming experiments, where reaction times to target words are predicted to be faster when preceded by morphologically-related primes compared to unrelated control primes, provide conflicting evidence bearing on this debate. We used meta-analysis to synthesise the findings from 229 priming experiments on 4710 unique Semitic speakers. With Bayesian modelling of the aggregate effect sizes, we found credible root and template priming in both nouns and verbs in Arabic and Hebrew. Our results show that root priming effects can be distinguished from the effects of overlap in form and meaning. However, more experiments are needed to determine if template priming effects can be distinguished from overlap in form and morphosyntactic function. 
    more » « less