Central bottleneck influences on the processing stages of word production.

Full Abstract

Does producing a word slow performance of a concurrent, unrelated task? In 2 experiments, 108 participants named pictures and discriminated tones. In Experiment 1, pictures were named after cloze sentences; the durations of the word-production stages of lemma and phonological word-form selection were manipulated with high- and low-constraint cloze sentences and high- and low-frequency-name pictures, respectively. In Experiment 2, pictures were presented with simultaneous distractor words; the durations of lemma and phoneme selection were manipulated with conceptually and phonologically related distractors. All manipulations, except the phoneme-selection manipulation, delayed tone-discrimination responses as much as picture-naming responses. These results suggest that early word-production stages--lemma and phonological word-form selection--are subject to a central processing bottleneck, whereas the later stage--phoneme selection--is not.

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Author information

Author/s: Ferreira, Victor S (VS); Pashler, Harold (H);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0109, USA. ferreira(-atsign-)psy.ucsd.edu

Grants: R01 MH045584-11 (Agency:United States NIMH) ; R01-MH45584 (Agency:United States NIMH) ; R01-MH64733 (Agency:United States NIMH)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Nov; vol 28 (issue 6) : pp 1187-99

Dates: Created 2002/11/26; Completed 2003/03/27; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12450341, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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