Enhanced phonological facilitation and traces of concurrent word form activation in speech production: An object-naming study with multiple distractors

In the present study, we extended the classic picture-word interference paradigm by the presentation of multiple distractor words (Experiment 1) to reexamine whether the word forms of semantic alternatives receive activation in the course of object naming. Experiment 2 showed that phonological facilitation can be magnified by the presentation of multiple words that share overlapping initial and final segments with the target name. Experiments 3 and 4 tested for traces of nontarget phonological activation with multiple distractors, which enhances the chances of detecting such effects. These experiments revealed a consistent pattern of interference effects induced by words that were related to a semantic category member, consistent with theories assuming phonological activation of nontarget alternatives.