Additivity of semantic and phonological effects: Evidence from speech production in Mandarin

Facilitation effect of token syllable frequency in Chinese spoken word production

Syllable frequency effects in spoken word production have been interpreted as evidence that speakers store syllable-sized motor programmes for phonetic encoding in alphabetic languages such as English or Dutch. However, the cognitive mechanism underlying the syllable frequency effect in Chinese spoken word production remains unknown. To investigate the locus of the syllable frequency effect in spoken Chinese, this study used a picture-word interference (PWI) task in which participants were asked to name the picture while ignoring the distractor word. The design included two variables: the syllable frequency of the target words (high vs. low) and the phonological relationships between distractor and target words (shared atonic syllable or not; related vs. unrelated). We manipulated mixed token and type syllable frequency in Experiment 1, and token syllable frequency but controlled type syllable frequency in Experiment 2. The results showed a facilitation effect of mixed syllable frequency and a similar facilitation effect of token syllable frequency. Importantly, the syllable frequency effect was found to be independent of the phonological facilitation effect. These results suggest that token syllable frequency played a dominant role in the observed facilitation effect, providing evidence that the syllable frequency effect arises in the phonetic encoding of Chinese spoken word production.

The multiple phonological activation in Chinese spoken word production: An ERP study supporting cascaded model

A central issue in spoken word production concerns how activation is transmitted from semantic to phonological levels. The current study investigated the issue of seriality and cascadedness in Chinese spoken word production, via the combined semantic blocked paradigm (with homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks) and picture-word interference paradigm (with phonologically related, mediated and unrelated distractors). Naming latencies data showed a mediated effect via comparing mediated and unrelated distractors in homogeneous blocks, a phonological facilitation effect via comparing phonologically related and unrelated distractors in homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks, and a semantic interference effect via comparing homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks. Critically, cluster-based permutation test of ERP data demonstrated a mediated effect around 266-326ms and an overlapped pattern of semantic interference effect around 264-418ms and phonological facilitation effect around 210-310ms in homogeneous or around 236-316ms in heterogeneous blocks. These findings indicated that speakers activate phonological nodes of non-targets, and present a cascadedness pattern of the transmission from semantics to phonology in Chinese spoken production. The present study sheds new insight on the neural correlates of semantic and phonological effects, and provides behavioral and electrophysiological evidences for the cascaded model within a theoretical framework of lexical competition in speech production.

Lexical Access in Preschool Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

PURPOSE

Children with cochlear implants (CIs) have less experience accessing spoken language. Mandarin Chinese uses pitch information to contrast word meaning, and the signal that the CI devices provide is degraded. Thus, Mandarin-speaking children with CIs may face more challenges in the development of language skills. This study examines preschool Mandarin-speaking children's performance in lexical access. We hypothesized that children with CIs and their peers with normal hearing (NH) have comparable naming ability, but they process phonological or semantic information differently.

METHOD

Twenty children with CIs and 20 age-matched children with NH were tested. The cross-modal visual-auditory picture-word interference paradigm was applied. The distractor was either phonologically related (mao⁵⁵ cat -mao⁵¹ hat), semantically related (mao⁵⁵ cat -shu²¹⁴ mouse) or unrelated (mao⁵⁵ cat -zhi²¹⁴ paper) to the target, and it was aurally presented at four different points in time relative to the picture. Accuracy was compared between the two groups to tap into the children's naming abilities, and reaction time was analyzed to examine the effects of phonological and semantic information.

RESULTS

No group difference in accuracy was found. The phonologically related distractors led to significantly higher accuracy scores and shorter reaction times, whereas the semantically related distractors did not. Unlike the NH group, the CI group did not respond significantly faster or slower in phonologically related condition when the distractor and picture occurred simultaneously. Finally, the CI group made overall quicker responses than the NH group.

CONCLUSIONS

Children with CIs are as successful as children with NH in word retrieval and production, and the two groups both show phonological priming effect and lack semantic effect. However, children with CIs do not process phonological information as early as their NH peers, and they may be more tasks directed and hence make quicker responses.

The dissociation between age of acquisition and word frequency effects in Chinese spoken picture naming

This study aimed to examine the locus of age of acquisition (AoA) and word frequency (WF) effects in Chinese spoken picture naming, using a picture-word interference task. We conducted four experiments manipulating the properties of picture names (AoA in Experiments 1 and 2, while controlling WF; and WF in Experiments 3 and 4, while controlling AoA), and the relations between distractors and targets (semantic or phonological relatedness). Both Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated AoA effects in picture naming; pictures of early acquired concepts were named faster than those acquired later. There was an interaction between AoA and semantic relatedness, but not between AoA and phonological relatedness, suggesting localisation of AoA effects at the stage of lexical access in picture naming. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated WF effects: pictures of high-frequency concepts were named faster than those of low-frequency concepts. WF interacted with both phonological and semantic relatedness, suggesting localisation of WF effects at multiple levels of picture naming, including lexical access and phonological encoding. Our findings show that AoA and WF effects exist in Chinese spoken word production and may arise at related processes of lexical selection.

Aging Effects on Phonological and Semantic Priming in the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Evidence From a Two-Step Approach

The mechanism underlying the age difference in spoken word production remains controversial. We used a two-step approach proposed by Gollan and Brown (2006) to investigate the semantic and phonological retrieval deficits when tip-of-the-tongue occurs in young and older adults. Importantly, we controlled the inhibition ability in both older and young groups. In experiment 1 with a people pictures naming task, older adults produced more TOTs than young adults, and they suffered from phonological retrieval deficit rather than semantic retrieval deficit in speaking. In experiment 2 with a priming paradigm, participants were presented semantically related or phonologically related names before target pictures, which formed semantic or phonological priming conditions for lexical access. Compared with young adults, older adults showed a greater effect of phonological priming on decreasing TOTs occurrence. For semantic retrieval deficit, older adults exhibited a smaller phonological facilitation effect and a larger semantic interference effect than young adults. For phonological retrieval deficit, older adults presented a larger phonological facilitation effect in the first-name related priming condition than the first-syllable related priming condition, whereas young adults showed similar facilitation effects between the two phonological priming conditions. Our findings provide consistent evidence for the transmission deficit hypothesis, and highlight that aging affects bidirectional connections between semantic and phonological nodes in speech production.

The Effect of Lexical Cohort Size Is Independent of Semantic Context Effects in a Picture-Word Interference Task: A Combined ERP and sLORETA Study

Lexical cohort size is known to play an important role in the magnitude of semantic interference during picture naming in continuous and blocking naming tasks. Nevertheless, whether and how lexical cohort size influences semantic context effects in a picture-word interference (PWI) task remains unclear. To address this issue, participants were required to name pictures, which were paired with both semantically related and unrelated distractors, from both large and small lexical cohorts while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Behavior results showed a semantic interference effect but no interaction between semantic relatedness and lexical cohort size in naming latencies. ERPs and correlation analyses revealed that semantic interference effects occurred at the lexical level in the time windows of 200-400 and 400-600 ms, and lexical cohort size effects occurred at the conceptual level in the time window of 100-200 ms and at the lexical level in the time windows of 200-400 ms. Critically, no interaction between two variables was found, reflecting that lexical cohort size is independent of semantic interference for categorical relations in the PWI. sLORETA results found stronger brain activations for large lexical cohorts at the left superior temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus in the time interval of 250-300 ms, which may relate to lexical selection and self-monitoring. Our findings provide evidence for the swinging lexical network rather than the response exclusion hypothesis in spoken production.

Experimentally Induced Single and Repeated Personal Name Confusions: The Impact of Phonological and Semantic Similarity

Three experiments investigated a common but intriguing phenomenon, that is, repeated personal name confusion, a phenomenon at the border between language and memory. The purpose of those experiments was to evaluate the impact of the semantic and phonological similarities on name confusion and to compare repeated naming confusions (i.e., repeatedly confounding two names) with single confusions (i.e., confounding two names only once) in a same experimental paradigm. In all experiments, participants (64 middle-aged participants for each experiment) were asked to memorize the association between 16 names and 16 faces (face-name learning task). In Experiments 1 and 2, the two studied variables were the phonological similarity between the confused names and the semantic similarity between the two bearers of the confused names (using a visually derived semantic code in Experiment 1 and an identity-specific semantic code in Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the impact of those two semantic similarities between the bearers of the confused names was taken into account, whereas the phonological similarity was not taken into account. First, results showed a main effect of the phonological and semantic similarity on name confusion (more confusions when the names were phonologically related or when the bearers of the names were semantically related). Second, we found that (1) the combination of the phonological and the semantic similarity and (2) the combination of the two semantic similarities led to an increase of name confusions. Third, in the three experiments, we found that the semantic and phonological similarities had a similar impact on repeated and single confusions. Finally, results showed that participants always made more single than repeated confusions, except in the case when the bearers of the confused names shared two semantic features.

It Is Not Necessary to Retrieve the Phonological Nodes of Context Objects for Chinese Speakers

The issue of how activation is transmitted from semantic to phonological level in spoken production remains controversial. Recent evidences from alphabetic languages support a cascaded view. However, given the different architecture of phonological encoding in non-alphabetic languages, it is not clear whether this view applies in Chinese, as a non-alphabetic script. We therefore investigated whether the not-to-be named pictures activate their phonological properties in Chinese speech production. In Experiment 1, participants were presented a target English word and a context picture (semantically related or unrelated, phonologically related or unrelated to target word in Chinese) and were asked to translate the English word into a Chinese word. The translation latencies were faster in the semantically related condition than in the unrelated condition. By contrast, no difference between phonologically related and unrelated was observed. In Experiment 2, in order to promote participants phonological sensitivity in a word-translation task, we increased the proportion of phonologically related trials from 25 to 50%. In Experiment 3, we employed a word association task that was more sensitive to phonological activation of context objects than a word translation task. The phonological activation of context objects were absent again in Experiments 2 and 3. Bayes Factor analysis suggested that the absence of phonological activation of context pictures was reliable. Results consistently revealed that only target lemma could activate the corresponding phonological node to guide articulation whereas no phonological activation of non-target lemma’s in Chinese. The present findings thus support a discrete model in Chinese spoken word production, which was contrastive with the cascaded view in alphabetic languages production.