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Influential neighbours? The role of semantic neighbours in word production

Solène Hameau1, Lyndsey A. Nickels1* and Britta Biedermann1, 2
  • 1 Macquarie University, Sydney, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD), Department of Cognitive Science, Australia
  • 2 Curtin University, School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Australia

It is increasingly clear that when trying to say a word, activation of words related in meaning can interfere with production of that word. Evidence supporting this position is available from priming and word picture interference tasks with both unimpaired speakers and people with aphasia (e.g., Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole-Virtue, 2006; Schnur, Schwartz, Brecher, & Hodgson, 2006; Schriefers, Meyer, & Levelt, 1990). However, it is less clear the extent to which semantically related words influence word production without previous presentation of this ‘neighbour’. Different effects of semantic neighbourhood are reported in the literature, and disentangling these effects is complicated by the use of different measures of semantic neighbourhood (e.g., Bormann, 2011; Kittredge, Dell, & Schwartz, 2007; Mirman, 2011). This study had three parts: Experiment 1 investigated the interrelationships between the six measures of semantic neighbourhood that have been used in previous studies: rated semantic neighbours (e.g. Bormann, 2011); raw contextual neighbours, categorical contextual neighbours (e.g. Kittredge et al., 2007); near feature neighbours, distant feature neighbours (e.g., Mirman, 2011); association neighbours. Using principal component analysis, four independent factors were derived that related to four types of neighbour: Featural, associative, contextual and distant semantic neighbours. Experiment 2 used these factors to determine the effects of semantic neighbourhood on the picture naming of 86 target pictures for whom all variables were available by 50 unimpaired speakers (data from Székely et al., 2003). The semantic neighbourhood factor scores determined in Experiment 1 were used, together with ‘lexical’, ‘sublexical’ and visual complexity factor scores in regressions predicting either RT or accuracy. While the overall model was significant in predicting RT (R2=.276, F= 4.257, p<.01), and both lexical and sublexical factors were significant, no semantic neighbourhood factor showed a significant effect on naming RT. The overall model was not significant for accuracy (R2=.086, F=1.044, p>.05). Finally, Experiment 3 analysed the effects of semantic neighbourhood on picture naming of the same items from Experiment 2 for a large group of individuals with aphasia (n=193) from the Moss Aphasia Psycholinguistic Project Database (MAPPD; Mirman et al., 2010). Using Generalised Mixed Effects models for binomial outcomes, we examined the effects of the same 7 factors on accuracy and error type and, for a reduced group for whom degree of semantic and phonological production impairment could be established (n=140), the interactions of these factors with impairment. For both groups, the feature-based neighbourhood factor predicted accuracy but did not interact with degree of semantic or phonological impairment. Nevertheless, the final model with per participant random slopes for feature-based factor was significantly better than the same model without random slopes (Χ2(3)=8.15, p=0.04), showing that the effect differed significantly across participants. In terms of errors, words with many feature-based neighbours were more likely to be correctly named than to result in omissions and phonological errors, and were more likely to result in a semantic error than to be omitted. The full theoretical implications of these results will be discussed but appear to be best accommodated within interactive theories of word production.

Acknowledgements

Lyndsey Nickels was funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT120100102].

References

Bormann, T. (2011). The role of lexical-semantic neighbourhood in object naming: implications for models of lexical access. Frontiers in Psychology, 2(127), 1-11.

Howard, D., Nickels, L., Coltheart, M., Cole-Virtue, J. (2006). Cumulative semantic inhibition in picture naming: experimental and computational studies. Cognition, 100(3), 464-482.

Kittredge, A.K., Dell, G.S., and Schwartz, M.F. (2007a). Omissions in aphasic picture naming: Late age-of-acquisition is the culprit, not low semantic density. Brain and Language, 103, 132-133.

Mirman, D. (2011). Effects of Near and Distant Semantic Neighbors on Word Production. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 11(1), 32-43.

Mirman, D., Strauss, T.J., Brecher, A., Walker, G.M., Sobel, P., Dell, G.S., and Schwartz, M.F. (2010). A large, searchable, web-based database of aphasic performance on picture naming and other tests of cognitive function. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 27(6), 495-504.

Schnur, T. T., Schwartz, M. F., Brecher, A., & Hodgson, C. (2006). Semantic interference during blocked-cyclic naming: Evidence from aphasia. Journal of Memory and Language, 54(2), 199-227.

Schriefers, H., Meyer, A., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1990). Exploring the time course of lexical access in language production: Picture-word interference studies. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 86–102

Székely, A., D’Amico, S., Devescovi, A., Federmeier, K., Herron, D., Iyer, G., Jacobsen, T., & Bates, E. (2003). Timed picture naming: Extended norms and validation against previous studies. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35(4), 621-633.

Keywords: Semantic Neighbours, spoken word production, Aphasia, lexical access, Semantic neighborhood density

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.

Presentation Type: poster or oral

Topic: General Submission

Citation: Hameau S, Nickels LA and Biedermann B (2019). Influential neighbours? The role of semantic neighbours in word production. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00117

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Received: 02 May 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Prof. Lyndsey A Nickels, Macquarie University, Sydney, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD), Department of Cognitive Science, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia, lyndsey.nickels@mq.edu.au