Can context aid lexical selection?

Shao, Zeshu; Rommers, Joost

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Talk

Can context aid lexical selection?

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons18605

Shao, Zeshu
Psychology of Language Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Shao, Z., & Rommers, J. (2015). Can context aid lexical selection?. Talk presented at the XII International Symposium of Psycholinguistics. Valencia. 2015-07-01 - 2015-07-04.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0027-D746-4

Abstract

Difficulties in saying the right word at the right time arise at least in part because multiple response candidates are simultaneously activated in the speaker’s mind. This has been simulated using the picture-word interference task. However, words are usually produced in context, in the service of achieving a communicative goal. We embedded the picture-word interference task in a dialogue setting, where participants heard a question and named a picture as an answer to the question (ignoring a superimposed distractor word). The question was either closely or loosely semantically related to the target. Results of mixed-effect modeling showed that naming latencies were shorter when preceded by a closely related question (context effect), t = 8.08 and when accompanied by an unrelated distractor (interference effect), t = 3.12. More importantly, interference effect was reduced after related questions, t = 2.00. This suggests that broader context can help overcome lexical selection difficulty.