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When participants in an experiment have to name pictures while ignoring distractor words superimposed on the picture or presented auditorily (i.e., picture-word interference paradigm), they take more time when the word to be named (or target) and distractor words are from the same semantic category (e.g., cat-dog). This experimental effect is known as the semantic interference effect, and is probably one of the most studied in the language production literature. The functional origin of the effect and the exact conditions in which it occurs are however still debated. Since Lupker (1979) reported the effect in the first response time experiment about 40 years ago, more than 300 similar experiments have been conducted. The semantic interference effect was replicated in many experiments, but several studies also reported the absence of an effect in a subset of experimental conditions. The aim of the present study is to provide a comprehensive theoretical review of the existing evidence to date and several Bayesian meta-analyses and meta-regressions to determine the size of the effect and explore the experimental conditions in which the effect surfaces. The results are discussed in the light of current debates about the functional origin of the semantic interference effect and its implications for our understanding of the language production system.
The picture-word interference paradigm (participants name target pictures while ignoring distractor words) is often used to model the planning processes involved in word production. The participants' naming times are delayed in the presence of a distractor (general interference). The size of this effect depends on the relationship between the target and distractor words. Distractors of the same semantic category create more interference (semantic interference), and distractors overlapping in phonology create less interference (phonological facilitation). The present study examined the relationships between these experimental effects, processing times, and attention in order to better understand the cognitive processes underlying participants' behavior in this paradigm. Participants named pictures with a superimposed line of Xs, semantically related distractors, phonologically related distractors, or unrelated distractors. General interference, semantic interference, and phonological facilitation effects were replicated. Distributional analyses revealed that general and semantic interference effects increase with naming times, while phonological facilitation decreases. The phonological facilitation and semantic interference effects were found to depend on the synchronicity in processing times between the planning of the picture's name and the processing of the distractor word. Finally, electroencephalographic power in the alpha band before stimulus onset varied with the position of the trial in the experiment and with repetition but did not predict the size of interference/facilitation effects. Taken together, these results suggest that experimental effects in the picture-word interference paradigm depend on processing times to both the target word and distractor word and that distributional patterns could partly reflect this dependency.