Chapter 2
The what and when of word retrieval in spoken language
production
Semantically driven lexical access in spoken
language production is the process of transposing a communicative
intention into phono-articulatory codes. At each stage of
processing, from lexical-semantic retrieval through to
phono-articulatory processing, more representations are active than
are minimally necessary to produce the target word. In recognition
of that fact, research over the past three decades has been driven
by a (putative) need to answer a core question: How is conflict
resolved at the lexical level? The ‘standard view’ involves some
form of the idea that selection of the target word is governed by a
stochastic process implemented via a biased competition mechanism,
with the nature of the ‘bias’ differing quite widely across
proposals. Here we argue that the standard view is out of synchrony
with a range of findings; interestingly, and as a matter of historical
precedent, a number of those findings pre-date the earliest
formulations of the standard view. Stepping back, we argue for a new
approach to framing the question of word retrieval: no mechanism is
needed to resolve conflict at the lexical level, because there is no
conflict at the lexical level. Selection occurs at
the semantic/message level. After selection of the intended meaning
representation, the next opportunity in the processing pathway to
re-evaluate which word to produce is at the level
of the pre-articulatory response monitor. We refer to this as a
‘ballistic’ model of word retrieval to emphasize there is no
uncertainty about the identity of the target
word at the lexical level, and that retrieval of
the correct representation at that level can be sped up, but not
slowed down.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Choice and timing in speech production
- Intra-trial manipulations
- Inter-trial manipulations
- Two debates about the dynamics of information access during word
retrieval
- Post-lexical decision processes: Adjudicating among production-ready responses
- Semantic facilitation in word retrieval
- Manipulating semantic distance while holding response relevance
constant
- Summary of Intra-trial semantic effects in Stroop-like
paradigms
- Inter-trial interference and facilitation in picture
naming
- Looking back to see forward
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Note
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References