<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>This review synthesizes findings from 117 studies that have manipulated various picture-word interference (PWI) task properties to establish whether semantic context effects reflect competitive word retrieval, or are driven by noncompetitive processes. Manipulations of several PWI task parameters (e.g., distractor visibility) have produced contradictory findings. Evidence derived from other manipulations (e.g., visual similarity between targets and distractors) has been scarce. Some of the manipulations that have furnished reliable effects (e.g., distractor taboo interference) do not discriminate between the rival theories. Interference from nonverbal distractors has been shown to be a genuine effect dependent on adequate lexicalization of interfering stimuli. This supports the swinging lexical network hypothesis and the selection-by-competition-with-competition-threshold hypothesis while undermining one of the assumptions of the response exclusion hypothesis. The contribution of pre-lexical processes, such as an interaction between distractor processing and conceptual encoding of the target to the overall semantic context effect is far from settled.</p>
</abstract>

This review synthesizes findings from 117 studies that have manipulated various picture-word interference (PWI) task properties to establish whether semantic context effects reflect competitive word retrieval, or are driven by noncompetitive processes. Manipulations of several PWI task parameters (e.g., distractor visibility) have produced contradictory findings. Evidence derived from other manipulations (e.g., visual similarity between targets and distractors) has been scarce. Some of the manipulations that have furnished reliable effects (e.g., distractor taboo interference) do not discriminate between the rival theories. Interference from nonverbal distractors has been shown to be a genuine effect dependent on adequate lexicalization of interfering stimuli. This supports the swinging lexical network hypothesis and the selection-by-competition-with-competition-threshold hypothesis while undermining one of the assumptions of the response exclusion hypothesis. The contribution of pre-lexical processes, such as an interaction between distractor processing and conceptual encoding of the target to the overall semantic context effect is far from settled.

Do words compete as we speak? A systematic review of picture-word interference (PWI) studies investigating the nature of lexical selection

Department of Psychology, School of Science and Technology

Psychology of Language and Communication

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This review synthesizes findings from 117 studies that have manipulated various picture-word interference (PWI) task properties to establish whether semantic...

Do words compete as we speak? A systematic review of picture-word interference (PWI) studies investigating the nature of lexical selection

Published Online: Jun 30, 2024

Page range: 261 - 322

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58734/plc-2024-0011

Keywords
picture word interference, lexical selection, language production,competition

© 2024 Małgorzata Korko et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Do words compete as we speak? A systematic review of picture-word interference (PWI) studies investigating the nature of lexical selection

Published Online: Jun 30, 2024

Page range: 261 - 322

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58734/plc-2024-0011

Keywordspicture word interference, lexical selection, language production,competition

© 2024 Małgorzata Korko et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
picture word interference, lexical selection, language production,competition