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Abstract:
Speakers clearly differ in how quickly they can retrieve
words from the mental lexicon, but little is known about
the sources of this variability. The present study investigated
the relationship between speakers’ executive
control abilities and their speed of picture naming. In two
experiments, adult speakers of British English named line
drawings of objects and actions. Three main components
of executive control - updating, shifting of attention, and
inhibiting - were assessed using the operation-span,
number-letter shifting, and stop-signal task, respectively
(see Myake et al.,2000 ). Reaction times (RT) to action
and object pictures were highly correlated. Ex-Gaussian
analyses of the RT distributions showed that the speakers’
updating scores correlated with the tau parameter of
the RT distributions, i.e. predicted the proportions of
slow responses in action and object naming. The inhibiting
scores correlated with the mean RTs, whereas the
scores obtained in the number-letter shifting task were
uncorrelated to the RTs. These results indicate that the
executive control abilities of updating and inhibiting
contribute to the speed of naming objects and actions.
Theories of word production may require modification to
take account of these findings.
