Bloem and La Heij 2003

Semantic facilitation and semantic interference inword translation: Implications for models of lexical

access in language production

Ineke Bloem* and Wido La Heij

Faculty of Social Sciences, Unit of Cognitive Psychology, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands

Received 31 October 2001; revision received 5 August 2002

Abstract

We first show that in a word-translation task, context words induce semantic interference whereas context pictures

induce semantic facilitation. Experiments 2 and 3 show that this finding is not due to differences between context words

and context pictures in terms of (a) relative speed of lexical activation or (b) the category level of the activated concepts.

To account for our findings, we propose that conceptually-driven lexical access is confined to the selected target concept

(or ‘‘preverbal message’’). A version of Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996) connectionist model in which this proposal was

implemented successfully simulated the polarity and the time course of the semantic context effects observed. In Ex-

periment 4 the prediction that context pictures do not induce lexical context effects was tested and confirmed.

� 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Keywords: Language production; Stroop; Semantic priming; Semantic interference; Selective attention

One of the empirical enigmas in experimental psy-

chology is that the presence of a semantic relation be-

tween a target stimulus and a context has a positive

effect on performance in some paradigms, but a clear

negative effect in others. This discrepancy, that Neu-

mann (1986) termed the ‘‘semantic relatedness para-

dox,’’ is most evident when one compares the results

obtained with traditional semantic priming tasks with

those obtained with variants of the Stroop task. For

example, in comparison with an unrelated word context,

the reading of the word CHAIR is facilitated when it is

preceded by the word TABLE (e.g., Warren, 1977), but

the naming of the color red is hampered by the simul-

taneous presentation of the word BLUE (Klein, 1964;

see MacLeod, 1991, for an overview). However, as will

be discussed shortly, even within Stroop-like paradigms

in which target and context are presented in close tem-

poral proximity, semantic interference as well as se-

mantic facilitation can be obtained.

The semantic relatedness paradox is mentioned at

several places in the literature (see, e.g., Levelt, Roelofs,

& Meyer, 1999; Underwood, 1986; Vitkovitch &

Humphreys, 1991; Vitkovitch & Tyrrell, 1999) and a

number of attempts were made to systematically inves-

tigate its cause (see, e.g., La Heij, 1988; La Heij, Dirkx,

& Kramer, 1990b; La Heij, Van der Heijden, & Sch-

reuder, 1985). A conclusion that can be derived from

these and other studies is that semantic interference will

always be obtained when two conditions are fulfilled.

First, the context is a word presented in close temporal

proximity to the target. Second, the task is a speech-

production task. That is, the response word has to be

retrieved based on conceptual information, as is the case

in color naming (Klein, 1964), picture naming (Rosinski,

1977; Underwood, 1976), definition naming (La Heij,

Starreveld, & Steehouwer, 1993b) and word translation

(La Heij et al., 1990a).

Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 468–488

Journal ofMemory and

Language

www.elsevier.com/locate/jml

*Corresponding author. Fax: +31-715273783.

E-mail address: [email protected] (I. Bloem).

0749-596X/02/$ - see front matter � 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00503-X

mail to: [email protected]

To the best of our knowledge, Glaser and Glaser

(1989) were the first to publish a processing model in

which this semantic interference effect was accounted for

in terms of spreading activation between related con-

cepts in semantic memory (Collins & Loftus, 1975). A

neural-network version of Glaser and Glaser�s account,proposed by Roelofs (1992) and Starreveld and La Heij

(1996), is presented in Fig. 1.

In the network in Fig. 1, Ct and Cc represent the

conceptual representations of the target and the context

stimulus, respectively. Lt and Lc represent the lexical

representations of the names of the target and the con-

text, respectively.1 In the models of Roelofs (1992) and

Starreveld and La Heij (1996), the presentation of a

picture–word stimulus is simulated by activating the

nodes Ct and Lc. The instruction to name the target

picture is implemented as an extra activation input to Ct

(‘‘task input’’ in Fig. 1). If target and context are se-

mantically related, spreading activation between Ct and

Cc results in an increase in activation of both nodes,

which in turn results in an increase of activation of both

lexical representations (note that the models assume that

during lexical access all activated concepts activate their

lexical representations). The crucial point is that there is

an asymmetry in the network: the target�s conceptual

representation gets more activation than the conceptual

representation of the context word. The reasons are that

(a) Ct is activated directly, whereas Cc is activated via its

lexical representation Lc (as a consequence, per time unit

only a fraction of Lc�s activation will spread to Cc) and

(b) Ct receives additional task activation. Because Ct is

stronger activated than Cc, relatively more activation

will spread from Ct to Cc than vice versa. Consequently,

spreading activation between related concepts results in

a relatively stronger increase in activation of the Lc node

than of the Lt node. Because Lt and Lc compete for

selection (selection takes place when the activation of Lt

exceeds the activation of Lc by a critical amount),

spreading activation ultimately results in a larger delay

in the selection of the correct lexical representation than

when target and context are unrelated: the semantic in-

terference effect.

Within research on language production, this ac-

count of semantic interference is widely accepted by now

(see e.g., Humphreys, Lloyd-Jones, & Fias, 1995; Levelt,

Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999; Starreveld & La Heij, 1995,

1996). Moreover, computer simulations (Roelofs, 1992;

Starreveld & La Heij, 1996) have confirmed that under

the conditions that prevail in picture–word interference

tasks, spreading activation indeed results in semantic

interference.

The mechanism of spreading activation is also widely

used to account for semantic facilitation effects in, for

instance, priming studies. It is therefore somewhat sur-

prising that little attempt has been made to investigate

whether the model depicted in Fig. 1 is capable of sim-

ulating semantic facilitation in speech-production

tasks.2 One reason might be that it is not completely

clear which factors are responsible for a reversal from

semantic interference into semantic facilitation. Factors

that may play a role are the inter stimulus interval (ISI),

SOA, type of relation between target and context (cat-

egorical or associative; see La Heij et al., 1990b) and the

instruction with respect to the processing of the context

stimulus.

An accidental observation that we made in two of

our studies on word translation may be very helpful in a

further understanding of the processes that underlie se-

mantic interference and semantic facilitation in speech

production. In a first study, La Heij et al. (1990a) used a

word-translation variant of the Stroop task in which an

English target word (e.g., SPOON) had to be translated

into Dutch (‘‘lepel’’). In the relevant experimental con-

ditions the target word was accompanied by a seman-

tically related context word (e.g., VORK, the Dutch

translation equivalent of the word fork) or by an

Fig. 1. The relevant part of Roelofs� (1992) and Starreveld and

La Heij�s (1996) models of lexical access. Ct ¼ conceptual rep-

resentation of the target, Cc ¼ conceptual representation of the

context stimulus, Lt ¼ lexical representation of the target�sname, Lc ¼ lexical representation of the name of the context

stimulus. The link between Ct and Cc has a zero weight when

target and context are semantically unrelated.

1 The issue whether these representations are abstract

lemma�s, as in Roelofs�s (1992) model, or contain phonological

information, as in Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996) model, is

irrelevant for the present issue.

2 One notable exception is Roelofs�s (1992) attempt to

account for semantic facilitation by assuming that context

words that are not part of the response set do not compete for

selection at the lexical level. However, this account was severely

challenged by findings that these context words do induce

semantic interference (Caramazza & Costa, 2000, 2001; Star-

reveld & La Heij, 1999; see Levelt et al., 1999; Roelofs, 2001, for

a reply).

I. Bloem, W. La Heij / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 468–488 469

unrelated Dutch context word. Completely in accor-

dance with the results of the picture–word interference

paradigm, this experiment showed a semantic interfer-

ence effect. This result was taken as support for the

hypothesis that semantic interference is obtained in all

tasks in which a response word has to be selected based

on a conceptual representation.

In a second study, La Heij, Hooglander, Kerling, and

Van der Velden (1996) addressed the question whether

translation from a foreign language into the first lan-

guage (backward translation) is conceptually mediated.

In these experiments, a context picture accompanied the

English target word (e.g., BEACH); the picture was ei-

ther semantically related (e.g., a parasol) or unrelated

(e.g., a house) with the target. The results showed a clear

effect of semantic relatedness, which was taken as evi-

dence that backward translation is indeed achieved via

the target word�s conceptual representation. For our

present purposes, the interesting observation was that in

these experiments a semantically related context picture

facilitated word translation in comparison with an un-

related picture.

Probably because the studies of La Heij et al. (1990a)

and La Heij et al. (1996) examined different issues, the

striking difference in polarity of the semantic context

effect has not received any attention in the literature.

However, if it could be shown that in word-translation

tasks a mere change in the modality of the context

stimulus (a word or a picture) results in a complete re-

versal from semantic interference into semantic facilita-

tion, we have an excellent empirical basis for a further

development of language production models (e.g., Levelt

et al., 1999; Roelofs, 1992; Starreveld & La Heij, 1996).

To elucidate this point, let us examine the network in

Fig. 1 again. If we assume that backward translation is

conceptually mediated (we return to that assumption in

the General discussion), the presentation of a target

word in a foreign language ultimately leads to the acti-

vation of the target concept Ct. Semantic interference by

context words as observed by La Heij et al. (1990a) can

be explained in the usual way: activation spreads from

Ct to Cc and from there to Lc. Lc also gets activation

from the context word and becomes a strong competitor

in the selection of the correct response Lt. When instead

of a context word a context picture is presented, as in the

study of La Heij et al. (1996), the situation is somewhat

different, but the model still predicts semantic interfer-

ence. Due to the presentation of the context picture, Cc

receives a lot of activation. If target and context are

semantically related, part of this activation spreads to

the target node Ct. This spread of activation is often

assumed to underlie semantic facilitation. However, the

activation of Ct (including task activation) spreads back

to Cc and from there to Lc. Ultimately, Lc will profit

more than Lt from the spread of activation at the con-

ceptual level and this will hamper the selection of Lt, just

as in the situation in which a context word was pre-

sented. Indeed, Roelofs (1992) reported that in his

model of lexical access context pictures, although to a

lesser degree than context words, induce semantic in-

terference.3

Simulations performed with the computer imple-

mentation of the Starreveld and La Heij (1996) model,

confirmed our theoretical analysis of the model�s be-

havior. In these simulations a number of parameters

were systematically varied up to the point where the

model was unable to select a response (no critical dif-

ference at the lexical level could be reached; see Ap-

pendix D for details). Manipulation of the following

parameters seemed most important. First, to simulate

the fact that the L2 target words used by La Heij et al.

(1996) probably activate their conceptual representa-

tions less strongly than target pictures in a picture–word

interference task, the input activation Ain was system-

atically reduced. Second, the amount of spreading acti-

vation (parameter wcc) was varied to investigate whether

a semantically related context picture induces facilita-

tion when enough of its activation spreads to the target

concept. Third, the amount of task activation (At) added

to the target concept was varied. Completely in line with

our theoretical analysis of the behavior of the model,

none of these manipulations (alone or in combination)

made the model produce a semantic facilitation effect.

Before discussing possible modifications of language

production models, it is necessary to determine whether

the remarkable difference in direction of the semantic

context effects reported by La Heij et al. (1990a) and La

Heij et al. (1996) is indeed due to the modality of the

context stimuli. In fact, the stimulus materials and the

display conditions used in the two studies differed in

many respects, which may have contributed to or per-

haps even caused the strong dissimilarity in results. To

examine this issue, in Experiment 1 a to-be-translated

English target word was accompanied by a word or a

picture that was either semantically related or unrelated

to the target. This experiment indeed showed a full re-

versal from semantic interference with word context into

semantic facilitation with picture context.

In Experiment 2 SOA was manipulated to test a

‘‘horse-race account’’ (or ‘‘relative speed hypothesis’’) of

the semantic facilitation effect obtained with picture

context. This account was rejected based on the finding

that context pictures still induced semantic facilitation

3 Because Glaser and Glaser (1989) obtained semantic

interference in a picture-naming task with picture context,

Roelofs (1992) considered this result as a successful simulation

of an empirical finding. However, Damian and Bowers (in

press) and La Heij, Heikoop, Akerboom, and Bloem (submit-

ted) recently showed that Glaser and Glaser�s finding is

irregular and probably due to selection problems in their

sequential discrimination task (see the General discussion).

470 I. Bloem, W. La Heij / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 468–488

when pre-exposed by 250ms. Experiment 3 examined

whether the semantic facilitation effect induced by con-

text pictures could be due to the (implicit) naming of the

pictures at a superordinate-category level. In the Dis-

cussion of Experiment 3, we propose a modification of

current language production models to account for our

findings. Finally, Experiments 4a and 4b tested and

confirmed a prediction derived from the revised model.

Experiment 1

Method

Participants. Sixteen Leiden University students

served as paid participants. They were native Dutch

speakers and highly proficient in the English language

(all received more than five years English education in

high school). They all had normal or corrected-to-nor-

mal vision.

Apparatus. The Experiment was programmed using

MEL Professional software (version 2.0d; Schneider,

1988). Presentation of the stimuli and collection of the

data were performed using a fast IBM compatible PC.

Two monitors were connected to the PC. The partic-

ipants were seated in front of an Iiyama 17-in. mon-

itor. The experimenter was shown the correct response

and the subject�s response latency on a VISA FM

1200 black/white monitor. Response latency was

measured by means of a voice-key with an accuracy of

1ms.

Stimuli. Thirty two high frequency English words

were selected (Appendix A) that were familiar to Dutch

university students and did not show a clear phonolog-

ical or orthographic relation with their Dutch transla-

tion equivalent (that is, no cognates were used). For

each of the target words a related concept was selected

that could be presented both as a word and as a picture

context. For the unrelated condition, the context con-

cepts were re-paired with the targets, such that the

context and the target were not semantically related. For

example, the target word TROUSERS (to be translated

into the Dutch word ‘‘broek’’) was accompanied by the

picture of a coat or by the word JAS (the Dutch trans-

lation equivalent of coat); in the unrelated condition

TROUSERS was accompanied either by the picture of a

cow or by the word KOE (the Dutch translation

equivalent of a cow). The Dutch translation equivalents

of the English target words and the Dutch context words

were of similar mean language frequency (log frequen-

cies of 1.87 and 1.73, respectively; CELEX database,

Burnage, 1990). The pictures were selected from the line

drawings provided by Snodgrass and Vanderwart

(1980). These pictures had a high name agreement,

which indicates that (for the English participants in that

study) they were easy to identify.

The to-be-translated English target word was always

presented in black lower-case letters against a white

background. The height and width of the target and

context words were 1:4�� 2� of visual angle for 3-letter

words up to 1:4�� 5� of visual angle for 8-letter words.

The target words were positioned in such a way that the

second letter appeared at the point of fixation. In the

picture-context condition the target word and context

picture were superimposed. The maximum size of the

pictures was 7�� 7� degree of visual angle. To assure a

high legibility of the target word the black letters that

made up the word were surrounded by a white border

(approximately 2mm) and the context picture was pre-

sented in gray. The pictures were positioned in such a

way that the target word did not cover their essential

features. In the word-context condition, the context

word was presented in red letters, 1.4� degree of visual

angle (center-to-center) below the target word. Viewing

distance was approximately 80 cm.

Procedure. The participants were tested individually

in a dimly illuminated room. In a written instruction,

they were asked to translate the English target words as

fast as possible while maintaining accuracy and to ig-

nore the context (word or picture). Next, each partici-

pant received a series of 32 trials in which the English

target words were presented in isolation. If the partici-

pant did not know the translation, produced an incor-

rect translation or hesitated, the trial was repeated at the

end of the series. Finally, two blocks of 64 trials were

presented, corresponding to the two context-type con-

ditions. Half of the participants started with picture

context, the other half with the word context. Each of

these experimental series was preceded by a practice

series in which each of the 32 English target words was

presented with a related or unrelated context stimulus.

Half of the target-context stimuli were semantically re-

lated, the other half unrelated. The context stimuli used

in these practice series were of the same modality, but

taken from a different set than the context stimuli in the

experimental series.

Each trial involved the following sequence. First, a

fixation point appeared for 500ms in the center of the

display. Next, the stimulus (target and context stimulus)

appeared and remained on the display until response. If

no response was registered after 2000ms, the stimulus

was removed from the display and the next trial was

started. The experimenter judged the responses and en-

tered a code into the computer to indicate whether the

response was correct or false. Voice key malfunction

could also be registered.

Results. Response latencies (RTs) of incorrect re-

sponses were excluded from the analyses. In addition,

RTs of trials in which the voice-key malfunctioned and

RTs under 300ms (most probably reflecting voice key

malfunctioning) were excluded (2.1% of the data). The

remaining RTs were used in the calculation of the means


per participant and per item for each of the four ex-

perimental conditions. The participant means per con-

dition are shown in Table 1.

Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed on

the participant (F1) and item means (F2) with relatedness

(related versus unrelated target-context pairs) and con-

text modality (picture versus word) as within-participant

factors. These analyses showed a significant interaction

between the factors context modality and semantic re-

latedness, F1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 4:18; p < :005; MSe ¼ 868:93,and F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 16:13; p < :001; MSe ¼ 1382:99, indi-

cating that the semantic relatedness effect was different

for word and picture contexts. With a word context, a

semantic interference effect of 28ms was obtained and

with a picture context, a 28ms semantic facilitation ef-

fect was obtained. To further investigate this interaction,

paired-samples t tests were performed on both the par-

ticipant means (t1) and the item means (t2). The semantic

interference effect induced by a word context were sig-

nificant, t1ð15Þ ¼ 2:58; p < :025; t2ð31Þ ¼ 2:38; p < :025.The same was true for the semantic facilitation effect

induced by a picture context, t1ð15Þ ¼ 3:55; p < :005;t2ð31Þ ¼ 3:33; p < :005.

Inspection of Table 1 reveals that the error percent-

ages paralleled the latency data. They were considered

too low to allow a meaningful analysis.

Discussion. The results of this Experiment completely

confirm the findings reported by La Heij et al. (1990a)

and La Heij et al. (1996). In accordance with the results

of the former study, backward translation was ham-

pered by the presence of a semantically related context

word in comparison to an unrelated word. In accor-

dance with the La Heij et al. (1996) study, backward

translation was facilitated by the presence of a seman-

tically related context picture in comparison to an un-

related picture. Apparently, the strong difference in the

direction of the semantic context effects in our previous

studies is completely due to a difference in context mo-

dality. To our knowledge, the present experiment is the

first to isolate one single variable that is capable of in-

ducing a full reversal from semantic interference into

semantic facilitation.

One other observation is worth discussing. The word

and picture context conditions did not differ in mean

response latency (779 and 783ms, respectively), sug-

gesting that context words and pictures induce a similar

overall effect on word translation latencies. However,

this finding should be interpreted with caution: in our

experiments, the context words were presented below the

central fixation point whereas the context pictures were

centered on the point of fixation. Therefore, a somewhat

reduced legibility of the context words and a possible

larger visual masking effect induced by the context pic-

tures may have contributed to this finding.

Experiment 2

A factor that might have contributed to the semantic

facilitation effect observed with picture contexts in Ex-

periment 1, is that pictures take more time to activate

their lexical representations than words do (Cattell,

1886; Fraisse, 1969). Consequently, context pictures

may induce facilitation at the conceptual level before

their names can interfere at the lexical level. The tradi-

tional way to investigate this ‘‘relative speed hypothesis’’

or ‘‘horse race account’’ is to give the nonverbal context

stimulus a ‘‘head start’’ (see, e.g., Glaser & D€uungelhoff,1984; Glaser & Glaser, 1982, for a similar approach in

the Stroop task and the picture–word interference task,

respectively). That is, the nonverbal context is presented

before the target word to compensate for a possible

difference in the speed with which the corresponding

lexical representations become activated. In the present

experiment, this objective was combined with the need

to obtain information about the time course of both

semantic interference and semantic facilitation in the

word-translation task.

In Experiment 2 SOA values of )250, 0, and +150ms

were used. The SOA of )250 seems large enough to

compensate for a difference in lexical access by pictures

and words (Glaser & D€uungelhoff, 1984) and small en-

ough to prevent anticipation strategies (Neely, 1977). In

addition, a neutral condition was added that might al-

low for a further interpretation of the semantic effects

observed. In the word-context condition, the neutral

stimulus consisted of a series of five Xs. In the picture-

context condition the neutral stimulus consisted of six

concentric rectangles.

Method

Participants. Thirty-six Leiden University students


Table 1

Mean RTs (in ms) and percentages of errors in the various experimental conditions of Experiment 1

Related Unrelated Relatedness effect

(RT unrelated)RT related)RT %Error RT %Error

Word context 793 2.0 765 1.6 )28Picture context 769 1.8 797 2.2 +28


Manal

Highlight

speakers and highly proficient in the English language.

Eighteen participants were randomly assigned to the

word-context condition, the others to the picture-con-

text condition.

Stimuli. The stimuli were identical to the ones in

Experiment 1, with the only difference that a neutral

condition was added. In the word-context condition, the

neutral stimuli consisted of a series of 5 Xs. In the pic-

ture-context condition the neutral stimulus was a sym-

metrical geometric figure consisting of 6 concentric

rectangles with largest dimensions of 5.4� (width)� 3.4�(height) of visual angle.

Procedure. The procedure was very similar to the one

in Experiment 1. The participants first examined a list

containing the 32 English target words and their Dutch

translations. Next, they received a practice series in which

theywere required to translate the 32English targetwords

as fast as possible. Finally, they received three experi-

mental series corresponding to the three SOA conditions.

The order of presentation of these conditions was com-

pletely balanced across participants. Each series consisted

of 96 trials each (32English target words� 3 experimental

conditions) and was preceded by eight practice trials that

were randomly chosen from the experimental materials

(Experiment 1 learned that eight trials sufficed to get used

to the presence of context words).

Results. The data were treated in the same way as in

Experiment 1. RTs of incorrect responses and RTs of

trials in which the voice-key malfunctioned or under

300ms were excluded from the analyses (4.67% of the

data). Table 2 shows the participant means in the vari-

ous experimental conditions.

ANOVAs were performed with target-context rela-

tion (semantically related, unrelated and neutral) and

SOA as within-participant factors and with context mo-

dality (words versus pictures) as between-participants or

within-items factor. These analyses showed a significant

main effect of context modality, F1ð1; 34Þ ¼ 14:33;p < :001; MSe ¼ 85,195.27, and F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 430:38;p < :001; MSe ¼ 4912:12, reflecting that mean response

latencies were smaller with a word (730ms) than with a

picture context (853ms). In addition, the main effect of

the factor target-context relation was significant,

F1ð2; 68Þ ¼ 20:54; p < :001; MSe ¼ 1443:39, and F2ð2;62Þ ¼ 33:40; p < :001; MSe ¼ 1734:86. The interaction

between context modality and target-context relation

was significant, F1ð2; 68Þ ¼ 9:02; p < :001; MSe ¼1443:39, and F2ð2; 62Þ ¼ 15:12; p < :001; MSe ¼2113:35. The interaction between SOA and context mo-

dality did not reach significance in the participants

analysis, but did reach significance in the item analysis,

F1ð2; 68Þ ¼ 0:69; p ¼ :504; MSe ¼ 8459:90; F2ð2; 62Þ ¼6:12; p < :01; MSe ¼ 1477:39. In addition, the three-

term interaction between semantic relatedness, context

modality and SOA reached significance, F1ð4; 136Þ ¼3:05; p < :05; MSe ¼ 919:53, and F2ð4; 124Þ ¼ 3:35;p < :05; MSe ¼ 1469:41. Averaged across SOAs, context

words induced a semantic interference effect of 10ms and

context pictures a semantic facilitation effect of 34ms.

Having found that the effect of a semantic relation

between target and context differed for a word and

picture context, we performed paired-samples t tests on

the data of the word context condition and of the picture

context condition per SOA. For the word context con-

dition, t tests showed a significant semantic interference

effect at SOA¼ 0ms, t1ð17Þ ¼ 2:31, p < :05, t2 (31)¼3.05, p < :005 and SOA¼+150ms, t1ð17Þ ¼ 2:37;p < :05; t2ð31Þ ¼ 2:41; p < :05.

For the picture context condition, t tests showed a

significant semantic facilitation effect at SOA¼)250ms, t1ð17Þ ¼ 3:22; p < :005; t2ð31Þ ¼ 2:89; p < :01, at

SOA¼ 0ms, t1ð17Þ ¼ 2:51; p < :05; t2ð31Þ ¼ 3:64;p < :001 and at SOA ¼ þ150ms; t1ð17Þ ¼ 3:07; p < :01;t2ð31Þ ¼ 2:94; p < :01.


ages in the various conditions mirrored the latency data.

These percentages were considered too small to allow a

meaningful analysis.

Discussion. The main finding in this experiment is a

significant interaction between context modality and

Table 2

Mean RTs (in ms) and error percentages in the various experimental conditions of Experiment 2, the relatedness effects and the

simulated relatedness effects

SOA Related Unrelated Neutral Relatedness

effect

Simulated

relatedness effectRT %Error RT %Error RT %Error

Word context

)250 719 1.6 726 0.9 712 1.4 +7 0

0 751 2.3 732 1.6 714 1.2 )19 )20150 761 2.8 744 1.9 709 1.7 )17 )20

Picture context

)250 847 1.2 885 0.5 832 1.6 +38 +40

0 849 1.6 888 1.6 836 1.0 +39 +20

150 836 2.8 862 2.6 837 1.7 +26 +20


semantic relatedness, again showing that the effect of a

semantic relation between target and context differs for

word and picture contexts. At SOA¼ 0, words induced a

semantic interference effect of 19ms (28ms in Experi-

ment 1) and pictures induced a semantic facilitation ef-

fect of 39ms (28ms in Experiment 1).

One reason for manipulating SOA in the present

experiment was to examine whether a pre-exposure of a

context picture would provide time for the picture�sname to become activated, which should result in se-

mantic interference. The results of the SOA )250ms

condition clearly proved this conjecture incorrect. At

this SOA, instead of semantic interference, context pic-

tures induced a semantic facilitation effect of 38ms. So,

we can safely conclude that the semantic facilitation

effect observed with picture context is not due to a de-

layed activation of the corresponding names at a lexical

level. The fact that context pictures induced semantic

facilitation even when presented 150ms after target

onset supports the view that pictures have a very fast

access to their conceptual representations (see, e.g.,

Glaser & Glaser, 1989).

Whereas pictures induced semantic facilitation in the

full SOA range examined, the semantic interference ef-

fect induced by context words appears to be confined to

the SOA values of 0 and +150ms. At SOA )250ms,

semantically related and unrelated context words in-

duced very similar mean response latencies (719 and

726ms, respectively). This finding is in line with the lack

of a semantic interference effect at an SOA of )400ms in

the word-translation study by La Heij et al. (1990a) and

in line with the time courses in picture–word interference

studies (Glaser & D€uungelhoff, 1984; Starreveld & La

Heij, 1996). We return to this lack of semantic inter-

ference at SOA¼)250ms in the General discussion.

The neutral context condition (a series of Xs in the

word-context condition and a set of concentric rectan-

gles in the picture-context condition) was intended to

serve as a baseline condition to get an indication of

‘‘real’’ facilitation and interference effects. The results

show that for context words the mean response latencies

obtained in the neutral condition were always smaller

than those obtained in the semantically related and un-

related conditions. This finding is often attributed to

interference of context words at a phonological level.

For context pictures, the mean response latencies ob-

tained in the neutral condition were not significantly

different from those obtained in the related condition. At

first sight, one might interpret the results of this condi-

tion as evidence that related context pictures do not

induce ‘‘real’’ semantic facilitation. However, as noted

by Jonides and Mack (1984), it could also be argued that

our neutral condition was not ‘‘neutral’’ in all respects.

For instance, it may be that the neutral picture chosen in

our experiment (a set of concentric rectangles) induced

less visual masking than the related and unrelated con-

text pictures. However, it is equally possible that other

factors contributed to this finding, like the visual com-

plexity and the meaningfulness of the related and unre-

lated pictures in comparison with the concentric

rectangles. In addition, the large number of repetitions

of the neutral context picture may have played a role.

Therefore, unfortunately, the results of the neutral

condition do not provide much insight in the nature of

the context effects in terms of ‘‘real’’ facilitation or in-

hibition.

The mean response latencies obtained were larger in

the picture-context condition than in the word-context

condition. In the Discussion of Experiment 1, we men-

tioned a number of factors that may contribute to a

difference between these conditions, like retinal locus

and visual masking. Given the fact that the two condi-

tions did not differ in Experiment 1, in which a with-

in-participants design was used, we do not venture a

further interpretation of this difference in the present

experiment.

As discussed above, current models of language

production cannot account for the semantic facilitation

effect observed with context pictures. The reason is that

these models assume that context pictures automatically

activate their names at the lexical level. For example,

when the English target word PIGEON is presented in

combination with the context picture of a swan, the

name of the picture (swan) will hamper the retrieval of

the Dutch response word ‘‘duif’’ (pigeon). Our data

clearly showed that this prediction is incorrect: the pic-

ture of a swan facilitates the translation of the word

PIGEON into the Dutch word ‘‘duif.’’ Before conclud-

ing that language production models have to be modi-

fied to accommodate this finding, we discuss two

alternative accounts of semantic facilitation effects with

picture context.

First, it could be argued that the words that were

activated by our context pictures may have differed from

the context words that we used in the word-context

condition. For example, the picture of a swan may not

have activated the ‘‘correct’’ basic-level concept (swan),

but a different basic-level concept (e.g., goose) instead.

The response to such an objection is simple: when PI-

GEON has to be translated, activation of the concept

goose should induce as much interference as the acti-

vation of the intended concept swan. In addition, as

noted above, the context pictures that we used had a

high name agreement (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980),

which makes it unlikely that many of these misidentifi-

cations occurred.

A second and more serious concern is the following.4

It could be argued that some, or perhaps all of our

4 We thank Dr. R. Treiman for suggesting this possible

account of our findings.


context pictures (e.g., of a swan) did not activate their

basic-level concepts, but the superordinate level concept

instead (e.g., bird). Recently, Vitkovitch and Tyrrell

(1999) reported that the naming of pictures at a subor-

dinate level (e.g., naming a picture of a poodle as

‘‘poodle’’ instead of ‘‘dog’’) is facilitated by the corre-

sponding basic-category word (e.g., dog) in comparison

to an unrelated word. Given this finding, it is conceiv-

able that the naming of a picture of a pigeon is facili-

tated when the context picture of a swan activates the

superordinate name ‘‘bird.’’ In Experiment 3, we tested

this ‘‘superordinate-category hypothesis.’’

Experiment 3

As noted above, Vitkovitch and Tyrrell (1999)

showed that naming pictures at a subordinate-category

level (e.g., ‘‘poodle’’) is facilitated by correct basic-level

names (e.g., ‘‘dog’’) in comparison to unrelated basic-

level names (e.g., ‘‘pear’’). Given this finding, it is

conceivable that names at a superordinate level (e.g.

‘‘animal’’) facilitate basic-level naming (e.g., ‘‘dog’’). If

so, the semantic facilitation effect observed in Experi-

ments 1 and 2 may have been due to participants re-

trieving (in part of the trials) the superordinate-category

name instead of the basic-level name of the context

picture. In this experiment, we test whether superordi-

nate-category names indeed induce semantic facilitation

in basic-level word production.

To that end, we used context words at the basic-

category level and at the superordinate-category level.

For example, the English target word (e.g., LETTUCE)

was accompanied by the basic-level words ERWT (pea;

semantically related) and BEEN (leg; semantically un-

related) and with the superordinate-category context

words GROENTE (vegetable; correct category label)

and DIER (animal; incorrect category label).

Method

Participants. Eighteen Leiden University students



Stimuli. Thirty English target words were selected

from ten different semantic categories (vehicles, vegeta-

bles, furniture, fruits, clothes, colors, animals, occupa-

tions, body parts and buildings). In the semantically

related, basic-level condition, these target words were

accompanied by basic-level names from the same se-

mantic category. In the related category-level condition,

the target words were accompanied by their category

labels. In the corresponding unrelated conditions, targets

and context words were re-paired to form unrelated pairs

(see Appendix B, for a full list of stimulus materials).

Procedure. The procedure was very similar to the one

in Experiment 2. The participants were first shown the

list of 30 English target words and their translations.

Next, they received a practice series in which the 30

target words were presented in isolation. The partici-

pants were instructed to translate these words as fast as

possible while maintaining accuracy. Finally, they re-

ceived an experimental series, consisting of 120 trials

each (30 English target words� 4 experimental condi-

tions), preceded by eight practice trials that were ran-

domly chosen from the experimental materials.


Experiment 2. RTs of incorrect responses and RTs of

trials in which the voice-key malfunctioned or RTs un-

der 300ms were excluded from the analyses (4.64% of

the data). Table 3 shows the participant means in the

various experimental conditions.

ANOVAs were performed with relatedness (seman-

tically related and unrelated target-context pairs) and

level of context word (basic and super ordinate category

level) as within-participant factors. This analysis showed

a significant main effect of relatedness, F1ð1; 17Þ ¼8:62; p < :01; MSe ¼ 2229:147, and F2ð1; 29Þ ¼ 10:20;p < :01; MSe ¼ 3330:485. The factor �categorization le-

vel of the context word� approached significance in the

participant analysis and was significant in the items

analysis, F1ð1; 17Þ ¼ 4:34; p < :055; MSe ¼ 3010:732,and F2ð1; 29Þ ¼ 7:033; p < :025; MSe ¼ 2676:506. The

interaction was far from significant. The error percent-

ages mirrored the latency data and were too low to allow

a meaningful analysis.

Discussion. The results of this experiment clearly

showed that categorization level of the context words

had no effect on the direction or size of the semantic

context effect. That is, context words at a superordi-

nate-category level induced semantic interference, just

as basic-level context words. In addition, the sizes of

the two effects were similar: basic-category and super-

ordinate-category context words induced semantic

Table 3

Mean RTs (in ms) and error percentages in the various experimental conditions of Experiment 3

Related Unrelated Semantic interference

RT %Error RT %Error RT

Basic-level distractors 898 5.6 868 4.1 30

Category-level distractors 874 5.0 838 3.3 36


interference effects of 30 and 36ms, respectively. Given

this finding, we can safely conclude that naming (part

of) the context pictures in Experiments 1 and 2 at the

superordinate-category level cannot be responsible for

the observed semantic facilitation effect with picture

context.

How then to account for the observation that context

pictures induce semantic facilitation in word translation?

In our view, all empirical evidence points in one direc-

tion: context pictures activate their conceptual repre-

sentations, but do not automatically activate their

names. In this way, semantically related context pictures

may facilitate the identification of the target word at a

conceptual level (e.g., due to spreading activation),

without hampering the selection of the response word at

the lexical level. It should be noted that the idea that

nonverbal stimuli do not automatically activate their

names is not new. A similar conclusion was reached in

research on Stroop interference and selective attention.

We will briefly discuss a number of relevant experi-

mental findings.

In research on Stroop color-word interference, much

attention has been given to the fact that reading a color

word is not delayed when it is presented in an incon-

gruent color (see MacLeod, 1991). The first explanation

given for this lack of a ‘‘reversed Stroop effect’’ was the

‘‘horse-race’’ account, or ‘‘relative speed hypothesis’’ in

which it is assumed that colors are slower in activating

their names than word are (Cattell, 1886; Fraisse,

1969). As discussed above, this account was tested by

introducing a time interval between the presentation of

the color and the presentation of the target word

(Glaser & Glaser, 1982; Neumann, 1980). The conclu-

sion of these studies was clear. Pre-exposure of the

color did not induce a reversed Stroop effect. Referring

to the ‘‘horse race account,’’ Neumann aptly summa-

rized his findings as follows: ‘‘Das zweite Pferd startet. .

. gar nicht zum Wettlauf’’ (‘‘the second horse. . . . does

not even start in the race;’’ p. 60). That is, incongruent

colors do not interfere with word reading because they

are slower in activating their names, but because they

do not activate their names at all. Glaser and Glaser

(1982) reached the same conclusion and provided ad-

ditional evidence for the controlled character of color

naming: when in the negative SOA conditions the

context color correctly predicted the target word in 80%

of the trials (so it became advantageous for the par-

ticipants to retrieve the color�s name), a reversed Stroop

effect did emerge.

A possible counterargument against the conclusion

of Neumann (1980) and Glaser and Glaser (1982) is that

color words may be read via a sublexical (grapheme-

phoneme conversion) route and for that reason are not

prone to interference by the name of the context color at

a lexical level (see, e.g., Roelofs, 1992). However, this

argument cannot be used for findings obtained with a

color–color variant of the Stroop task (in which color

naming is hampered by an incongruent color patch)

reported by La Heij, Helaha, and Van Den Hof (1993a)

and La Heij et al. (1995; see also La Heij, Van der

Heijden, & Plooij, 2001). These authors argued that

color–color interference effects reported in the literature

may have been due to the incorrect selection of the

context color for naming; an error that would lead to a

strong activation of the name of the context color. This

activation may lead either to an incorrect response or to

interference in retrieving the correct color name, just as

in the orthodox color-word Stroop task. In accordance

with this account, La Heij et al. 1993a, 19931993b and

La Heij, Kaptein, Kalff, and de Lange (1995) showed

that color–color interference could be eliminated by fa-

cilitating the selection of the target color. This facilita-

tion was achieved by increasing the discriminability of

target and context in terms of position (presentation of

the target at a fixed position), form (using different

shapes for target and context) and exposure duration

(using different exposure durations for target and con-

text stimulus). Based on their findings, these authors

concluded that nonverbal context stimuli (e.g., colors)

are processed up to the level of identification but do not

activate their names, provided that they are not erro-

neously selected for naming (see Driver & Tipper, 1989,

for a similar conclusion with respect to context pictures

in the negative priming paradigm).

Finally, our proposal that nonverbal stimuli do not

automatically activate their names at the lexical level is

in line with the results and interpretations of the post-

cue naming task reported by Humphreys et al. (1995). In

this task, two pictures were presented and the partici-

pants were asked to retrieve both names. A post-cue

indicated which picture had to be named aloud. The

authors reported that a semantic relation between the

two pictures resulted in interference, a finding that is in

accordance with the idea that the two names compete

for selection at the lexical level. The interesting finding

was that when one of the pictures was pre-cued, no se-

mantic interference effect was obtained. This finding

suggests that in that situation, as in our experiments, the

name of the context picture was not activated. The

reason why Humphreys et al. (1995) did not observe

semantic facilitation in their pre-cue condition (as we did

in our Experiments 1 and 2) is most likely that target

identification (concept activation) is faster for pictures

than for L2 words. Consequently, a semantically related

context will induce only a small facilitating effect on

picture recognition. We return to this issue in the Gen-

eral discussion.

We conclude that these findings, in combination with

the results obtained in Experiments 1–3, provide sub-

stantial empirical evidence in favor of the view that

nonverbal context stimuli activate their conceptual rep-

resentations, but do not automatically activate their


names. The studies discussed above suggest that the

names of these context stimuli only become activated

when the participants erroneously select the context

picture for naming or when they are instructed to re-

trieve the name of the context picture, as in the

Humphreys et al.�s (1995) post-cue naming task. An-

other way of putting this conclusion is to say that name

retrieval is a controlled process that only uses the target

concept to retrieve the appropriate word in the mental

lexicon; a conclusion that seems in line with Levelt�s(1989) original ‘‘blueprint of the speaker’’ in which lex-

icalization is confined to the content of the ‘‘preverbal

message.’’ In the following section, we present a possible

implementation of this idea in Starreveld and La Heij�s(1996) model of lexical access.

Models of lexical access

As discussed above, current models of language

production are able to account for semantic interference

induced by a context word, but not for semantic facili-

tation induced by a context picture. Because alternative

accounts of this semantic facilitation effect could be re-

jected based on the results of Experiments 1–3, a mod-

ification of the current models seems required.

The proposed modification concerns the assumption

in language production models that during lexical ac-

cess all activated concepts activate their lexical repre-

sentations automatically and in parallel. The

consequence of this assumption is that spreading acti-

vation at the conceptual level inevitably leads to a rel-

atively strong increase in activation of the name of a

semantically related context stimulus. To account for

the semantic facilitation effect observed with context

pictures, we propose that activated concepts do not

automatically activate their names. Instead, lexical ac-

cess in language production is viewed as a controlled

process that is only applied to the target�s conceptual

representation. As discussed above, this assumption is

not new; various researchers have advanced the same

idea in order to account for, for instance, the lack of a

�reversed Stroop effect.�Before presenting the modifications made to the im-

plemented version of the Starreveld and La Heij (1996)

model, one issue has to be discussed. As mentioned in

the introduction, we assume that word translation re-

sembles picture naming in the fact that it is conceptually

mediated (we return to that assumption in the General

discussion). However, it is clear that L2 words and

pictures differ in the processing stages that lead to con-

ceptual activation. The most important difference is that

an L2 target word will strongly activate its representa-

tions at the lexical level before activating the corre-

sponding concept. Therefore, in theory, in our

experiments the lexical representation of the L2 target

word (e.g., HORSE) could compete for selection with

the correct response word (e.g., PAARD; see Green,

1998).

For the following two reasons, we decided not to

model this first stage of lexical activation in the word

translation task. First, within the literature on bilin-

gualism it is generally assumed that in word translation,

bilinguals are able to ignore or suppress words in the

nonresponse language. For instance, Costa, Miozzo,

and Caramazza (1999) proposed that the lexical-selec-

tion mechanism considers words from the response

language only. If that were true, activation of the target

word would have no effect on response-retrieval times.

Another possibility is that the response selection mech-

anism is not language selective, but that the L2 target

word has sufficiently decayed by the time the correct L1

word has to be selected.

The idea that the L2 target word does not strongly

interfere with the selection of the correct response word

is supported by our experimental findings. If the lexical

representation of the L2 target word would be strongly

activated at the time of response selection (due to its

visual presentation and its high conceptual similarity

with the correct response word), its massive interference

at the lexical level should render effects induced by the

context words, like semantic interference and phono-

logical facilitation, invisible. The very fact that the

translation of the English word HORSE into the Dutch

word PAARD takes longer when it is presented with the

context word KOE (cow) than when presented with the

context word SOK (sock) indicates that the lexical ac-

tivation of the L2 target word HORSE does not play a

substantial role in lexical selection. Given these consid-

erations, we decided to simulate the presentation of an

L2 target word in the same way as Starreveld and La

Heij (1996) simulated the presentation of a target pic-

ture: by adding activation to the corresponding con-

ceptual representation.

How to modify the Starreveld and La Heij (1996)

model to implement our assumption that only the target

concept is lexicalized? A very simple way is to assume a

threshold at the conceptual level.5 Only the concept that

is selected for naming, that is, the concept that receives

task activation, exceeds threshold (is selected) and acti-

vates its lexical representation. With this assumption,

the model easily accounts for semantic facilitation with

picture context. Spreading activation at the conceptual

level between the two activated, semantically related

concepts cause the target concept (in our experiments

5 It should be noted that a threshold is only one way to

implement this proposal in a network model. Another possi-

bility is a disinhibition (elevation of the inhibition) of the link

between concept and lexical representations (see, e.g., Van der

Velde & De Kamps, 2001).


the meaning of the L2 word) to reach the threshold

earlier, resulting in semantic facilitation. The spread of

activation from the target concept to other, related,

concepts has no consequence for activation levels at the

lexical level, as long as the activation levels of these se-

mantically related conceptual representations remain

below the assumed threshold level.6

However, to account for semantic interference an

additional modification has to be made: once above

threshold, the target concept does not only activate its

own name but also - to a small degree - semantically

related words. This assumption is in line with earlier

conceptualizations of lexical access, in which the acti-

vation level of a word was thought to be proportional to

the amount of overlap of its semantic characteristics and

the semantic characteristics of the concept to-be-ex-

pressed (e.g., Levelt, 1989; Morton, 1969). The resulting

modifications are illustrated in Fig. 2.

Simulations were performed with the relevant part of

the Starreveld and La Heij (1996) model, using param-

eters very similar to those of Starreveld and La Heij

(1996; see Appendix D). The main purpose of the simu-

lations was to check whether the revised model was able

to simulate the change in polarity of the semantic context

effect with a change in context modality. In addition, an

attempt was made to simulate the time courses of se-

mantic facilitation and semantic interference. The right-

most column in Table 2 shows the simulated differences

between the semantically related and unrelated context

conditions in the various conditions of Experiment 2.

As is evident from the simulation results, the model

successfully simulated the reversal from semantic inter-

ference with word context into semantic facilitation with

picture context. Moreover, the model appeared quite

successful in simulating the time course of semantic in-

terference and facilitation. The correlation between the

observed data and the simulated data was high (r ¼ :96;p < :005). Most importantly, the model simulated the

lack of a semantic interference effect with word context

at an SOA of )250ms. This result appeared to be due to

the decay of the activation of the lexical representation

of the context word by the time the target was presented.

Finally, it should be noted that the modified model was

still capable of simulating the word-context effects re-

ported by Starreveld and La Heij (1996): phonological

facilitation, semantic interference and the interaction

between these two factors.

In the modified model, the assumption is made that

context pictures do not activate their lexical representa-

tions. Therefore, a prediction that can be derived from

our model is that context pictures should not induce any

effect at the lexical level, including phonological facili-

tation (La Heij et al., 1990a; Posnansky & Rayner, 1977;

Schriefers, Meyer, & Levelt, 1990; Starreveld & La Heij,

1995). That is, the translation of an English target word

(e.g., WITCH) into the Dutch translation equivalent

(e.g., HEKS) should not be facilitated by a context pic-

ture (e.g., a fence; Dutch name HEK), whose name has a

strong phonological similarity to the correct response

word. In Experiment 4, we put this prediction to the test.

Experiment 4

In the Experiments 4a and 4b, the prediction was

tested that, in contrast to context words, context pic-

tures do not induce phonological facilitation. As in the

previous experiments, the target stimuli were to-be-

translated English words (e.g., the target WITCH that

should be translated into the Dutch word ‘‘heks’’). In

the word-context condition, these target words were

accompanied by phonologically related context words

(e.g., the word HEK, the Dutch translation equivalent

of fence) or unrelated context words (e.g., the word

KANON, the Dutch translation equivalent of canon). In

the picture context condition, the corresponding pictures

replaced the context words. For example, the target

WITCH (Dutch: ‘‘heks’’) was accompanied by the pic-

ture of a fence (hek) or the picture of a canon (kanon).

In Experiment 4a, the SOA values )250 and 0ms

were used. Participants did not receive any training in

naming the context picture to prevent them from no-

ticing the phonological similarity between the names of

the context pictures and the correct responses and from

using this similarity strategically. In Experiment 4b, only

one SOA was used (0ms) and—as a stronger test of the

prediction—participants did receive prior training in

naming the context pictures.

Fig. 2. The modification of Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996)

model of lexical access, used in the simulations. A conceptual

representation only activates lexical representations when its

activation exceeds a threshold value.

6 In the simulations, the assumption was made that the

threshold does not apply to the spreading of activation in the

reverse direction: from lexical representations to conceptual

representations (as it occurs in word perception). This assump-

tion, however, was not crucial in simulating the reversal from

semantic interference into facilitation.


Experiment 4a

It takes more time to name a picture than to name a

word (see Cattell, 1886; Fraisse, 1969). Previous research

has shown that with the highly familiar pictures used in

our experiments this difference typically amounts to

200–300ms (see, e.g., Glaser & D€uungelhoff, 1984). Incombination with Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996) find-

ing that context words produce phonological facilitation

in the SOA range of )200 up to +100ms, this leads to

the expectation that if context pictures induce phono-

logical facilitation this effect will be maximal with a

short pre-exposure of the picture. Therefore, in Experi-

ment 4a, in addition to the simultaneous presentation of

target and context, also an SOA of )250ms was used. In

this experiment, in contrast to Experiment 4b, partici-

pants did not receive practice in naming the context

pictures to prevent them from adopting a strategy of

using the initial phonemes of the name of the context

picture in the translation task. After completion of the

experiment, the participants were asked to name all

context pictures. Data of trials in the word translation

task that involved context pictures that were named

incorrectly in this test (that is, context pictures that were

given a name different from the one in Appendix C) were

removed from the analyses on a subject-by-subject basis.

Method

Participants. Thirty-two Leiden University students



Sixteen participants were randomly assigned to the


text condition.

Stimuli. The targets were 32 to-be-translated English

words (Appendix C). The targets had no phonological

relation with the Dutch translation equivalent, that is,

no cognates were used. For each of the response words a

phonologically related Dutch context word and the

corresponding picture were selected. For example, in the

phonologically related condition, the picture of a book

or the word BOEK (the Dutch translation equivalent of

book) accompanied the target word FARMER (to be

translated into the Dutch word ‘‘boer’’). The unrelated

stimuli were created by re-pairing these sets of words.

The phonologically related and unrelated context stimuli

did not have an obvious semantic or associative relation

with the accompanying target word. The Dutch trans-

lation equivalents of the English target words and the

Dutch context words had similar mean language fre-

quencies (log frequencies of 1.76 and 1.63, respectively;

CELEX database, Burnage, 1990). The pictures were

selected from the line drawings provided by Snodgrass

and Vanderwart (1980). The same display layout was

used as in the previous experiments.

Procedure. The procedure was similar to the one in

Experiments 2 and 3. Two SOA values were used:

)250ms (context presented first) and 0ms (simultaneous

presentation). The participants were first shown a list

with the 32 English target words and their translations.

Next, they received a practice series in which the 32

target words were presented in isolation. Finally, they

received two experimental series corresponding to the

two SOA conditions. The order of presentation of these

series was balanced across participants. Each series

consisted of 64 trials each (32 English target words� 2

context conditions) and was preceded by eight practice

trials that were randomly chosen from the experimental

materials. At the end of the experimental session, par-

ticipants were shown a list of the context pictures and

they were asked to name them.


the other experiments (3.61% of the data were removed).

In addition, RTs of trials involving context pictures that

were incorrectly named in the follow-up test series were

excluded from the analyses on a subject-by-subject basis

(10.55% on average). Table 4 shows the mean response

latencies in the various experimental conditions.


tion (phonologically related and unrelated) and SOA as

within-participant factors and with context modality

(words versus pictures) as between-participants and

within-items factor. These analyses showed a significant

main effect of context modality, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 6:07;p < :05; MSe ¼ 18,898.52, and F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 200:73;p < :001; MSe ¼ 3582:68, reflecting that the mean re-

sponse latencies were smaller with a word (707ms) than

with a picture context (767ms). Also the main effects of

the factors target-context relation, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 9:26;p < :005; MSe ¼ 1079:43, and F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 12:92;p < :001; MSe ¼ 2376:29, and SOA were significant,

F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 11:26; p < :01; MSe ¼ 3903:87 and F2ð1;31Þ ¼ 46:24; p < :001; MSe ¼ 1662:19. The interaction

between context modality and target-context relation

was significant, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 4:69; p < :05; MSe ¼1079:43 ðF2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 2:17; p < :151; MSe ¼ 2166:02Þ,indicating that the effect of a phonological relation be-

tween target and context differed for word and picture

contexts. The t tests showed that, in the word context

condition, the mean response latencies were significantly

smaller with phonologically related (692ms) than with

unrelated context stimuli (723ms), t1 (15)¼ 3.39,

p < :01; t2 (31)¼ 3.25, p < :01. In the picture context

condition, this difference was not significant. A signifi-

cant interaction was obtained between SOA and target-

context relation, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 5:55; p < :05; MSe ¼496:36 (F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 3:84; p < :059; MSe ¼ 1376:81).The interaction between SOA and context modality only

reached significance in the item analysis, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼1:40; p < :246; MSe ¼ 3861:31; F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 8:17; p <:01; MSe ¼ 1376:20.


Having found that the effect of a phonological rela-

tion between target and context differed for a word and

picture context, we performed separate ANOVAs on the

data of the word- and picture context condition. For the

word-context condition significant main effects were

obtained for the factors target-context relation (related,

unrelated), F1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 11:50; p < :01; MSe ¼ 1272:98,and F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 10:55; p < :01; MSe ¼ 2700:77, and

SOA, F1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 17:42; p < :001; MSe ¼ 2372:71, andF2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 100:14; p < :001; MSe ¼ 733:56. For the

picture context condition, the main effect of SOA was

significant in the item analysis, F1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 1:59;p < :226; MSe ¼ 5419:30; F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 6:36; p < :05;MSe ¼ 2304:83. The interaction between target-con-

text relatedness and SOA reached significance in the

subject analysis, F1ð1; 16Þ ¼ 5:84; p < :05; MSe ¼410:78 ðF2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 2:36; p < :135; MSe ¼ 1830:51Þ.Separate t tests performed on the data of the two SOA

conditions showed that neither the )7ms difference at

SOA )250ms (p > :30) nor the 17ms difference at SOA

0ms (p > :10) reached significance.


ages paralleled the latency data.. The error percentages

were too low to allow a meaningful analysis.

Discussion. In accordance with the results of many

studies on picture naming (e.g., Posnansky & Rayner,

1977; Schriefers et al., 1990) and with the results of a

study on word translation (La Heij et al., 1990a), con-

text words induced a phonological facilitation effect

(24ms facilitation at SOA )250 and 36ms facilitation at

SOA 0ms). In accordance with the prediction of our

model, context pictures did not induce a significant

phonological facilitation effect. In the introduction we

argued that because of the time that it takes for pictures

to activate their lexical representations, such an effect

should be maximal with a short pre-exposure of the

context picture. This was clearly not what we obtained:

at SOA )250ms, the phonological facilitation effect was

virtually zero. The 17ms difference that was obtained at

SOA 0 did not reach significance. However, given the

size and direction of this difference between the phono-

logically related and unrelated conditions, we decided to

reexamine this condition in Experiment 4b.

Experiment 4b

In this experiment only the SOA¼ 0 condition was

examined. In addition, to test the prediction of our

modified model more rigorously, participants in this

experiment were trained in using the correct names for

the context picture in advance of the experimental series.

Again, the prediction was that if the context pictures do

not automatically activate their names, no phonological

facilitation effect should be observed.

Participants. Thirty-two Leiden University students



Sixteen participants were randomly assigned to the


text condition.

Stimuli. The same targets were used as in Experiment

4a.

Procedure. The procedure was similar to the one in

Experiments 2 and 3. The participants were first shown a

list containing the 32 English target words and their

translations. Next, the 32 target words were presented

without context and the participants were required to

translate them as fast as possible while maintaining ac-

curacy. Finally, they received one experimental series of

Table 4

Mean RTs (in ms) and error percentages in the various experimental conditions of Experiments 4a and 4b

Phonologically Phonological Relatedness

effect (unrelated) related)Related Unrelated

RT %Error RT %Error

Experiment 4a.

Word context

SOA

)250 721 3.3 745 2.9 +24

0 664 3.5 700 3.5 +36

Picture context

SOA

)250 782 3.1 775 4.5 )70 747 1.8 764 4.1 +17

Experiment 4b

Word context 770 4.9 825 6.3 +55

Picture context 825 7.0 811 7.8 )14


64 trials (32 target words� 2 context conditions), pre-

ceded by eight practice trials that were randomly chosen

from the experimental materials.


Experiments 1–3 (6.49% of the data were removed).

Table 4 shows the mean response latencies in the various

experimental conditions.


tion (phonologically related and unrelated) as within-

participant factor and with context modality (words

versus pictures) as between-participants and within-

items factor. In the item analysis a significant main effect

was obtained for context modality, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 0:22;p < :642; MSe ¼ 30,018.25, F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 7:01; p < :05;MSe ¼ 2097:040. In addition, the interaction between

context modality and target-context relation were sig-

nificant, F1ð1; 30Þ ¼ 9:02; p < :01; MSe ¼ 2099:13;F2ð1; 31Þ ¼ 9:28; p < :01; MSe ¼ 4388:74, indicating

that the effect of a phonological relation between target

and context differed for word and picture contexts. The t

tests showed that, in the word context condition, the

mean response latencies were significantly smaller with

phonologically related than with unrelated context

stimuli (a phonological facilitation effect of 55ms),

t1ð15Þ ¼ 3:77; p < :01; t2ð31Þ ¼ 3:34; p < :01. In the

picture context condition, this difference was not sig-

nificant.

The error percentages in this experiment were

somewhat higher than in the previous experiments, but

were still judged too small to allow a meaningful anal-

ysis. The pattern of error percentages paralleled the la-

tency data.

Discussion. The results again show that the phono-

logical similarity between the context words and the

response words was strong enough to induce a sub-

stantial amount of facilitation (55ms). In contrast to this

finding with context words, but in accordance with the

prediction of our model, context pictures did not induce

a significant phonological facilitation effect ()13ms).

In addition, an ANOVA performed on the combined

data of Experiment 4a (picture context, SOA 0 condi-

tion) and Experiment 4b, with target-context relation

(phonological related versus unrelated) as within-par-

ticipant factors and experiment (4a and 4b) as between-

participants factor revealed no significant phonological

facilitation effect. The mean response latencies in the

phonological related and unrelated conditions were 786

and 788ms, respectively (F < 1:0).Therefore, Experiments 4a and 4b clearly show that

context words induce phonological facilitation, but

context pictures do not. This finding is completely in

accordance with the prediction of the modified Star-

reveld and La Heij (1996) model. It should be noted that

Experiments 4a and 4b provide a test of our proposed

modification within models of language production that

assume cascaded processing (e.g., Caramazza, 1997;

Dell, 1986; Starreveld & La Heij, 1996). Serial, two-stage

models (e.g., Levelt et al., 1999), in which only the se-

lected lemma is phonologically encoded, do not predict

phonological effects of context pictures, even if these

pictures activate their lexical representations (lemmas).

Of course, these models still face the problem of ac-

counting for the semantic facilitation effects observed in

our Experiments 1 and 2.

Very recently, Morsella and Miozzo (2002) published

experimental results that seem to be at variance with our

present findings. These authors presented two superim-

posed linedrawings, one in green and one in red and

asked their participants to name the green picture and to

ignore the red one. The main experimental variable was

the presence or absence of a phonological relation be-

tween the names of the two pictures. In the single ex-

periment reported, such a phonological context effect

was obtained. A possible cause of the discrepancy be-

tween this finding and the results of our Experiments 4a

and 4b is that the presentation of two superimposed

pictures may have induced selection problems, whereas

target selection in our experiments was probably easy

because of the large physical difference between the

target (a word) and the context (a line drawing). Possible

selection problems in part of the trials of Morsella and

Miozzo�s experiment may have resulted in the activation

of the context picture�s name at a lexical level. Clearly,

this interpretation of the discrepancy between the two

studies is in need of further investigation.

It is important to note that Morsella and Miozzo�s(2002) observation of phonological facilitation in a

picture–picture task is not only at variance with our

present findings, but is also hard to reconcile with the

lack of semantic interference in the picture-picture tasks

reported by Humphreys et al. (1995) and Humphreys

et al. (1995). If a context picture activates its name, as

suggested by the results of Morsella and Miozzo, all

language production models predict that also semantic

interference should be obtained.

Finally, it should be mentioned that in Experiments

4a and 4b response latencies were again somewhat larger

when the target words were accompanied by context

pictures than when accompanied by context words. As

argued in Discussion of Experiment 1, this finding is

hard to interpret, given the differences in display char-

acteristics between the two context conditions and given

the fact that the two conditions did not differ in Ex-

periment 1, in which a within-participants design was

used.

General discussion

A semantic relation between a target stimulus and a

context stimulus facilitates performance in some lan-

guage production tasks, but hampers performance in


others. Results obtained in word-translation tasks re-

ported by La Heij et al. (1990a) and La Heij et al. (1996)

suggest that one factor that determines the polarity of

the semantic context effect is the modality of the context

stimulus: a word or a picture. In Experiment 1, we first

determined whether context modality is indeed a crucial

factor underlying the reversal from semantic interference

with word context into semantic facilitation with picture

context. This proved to be the case. The finding of se-

mantic facilitation with picture context is particularly

interesting, because current models of language pro-

duction predict that context pictures, like context words,

induce semantic interference. As discussed in the intro-

duction, this prediction is a consequence of the models�assumption that concepts corresponding to the context

pictures automatically activate their names at the lexical

level and that more activation spreads from the target

concept to the context concept than vice versa.

Before concluding that this aspect of current lan-

guage production models needs modification, two al-

ternative accounts of the semantic facilitation effect

induced by context pictures were evaluated. First, Ex-

periment 2 showed that context pictures induce semantic

facilitation even when presented 250ms in advance of

the target; a finding that eliminates the hypothesis that

the semantic facilitation effect at SOA 0 is due to the fact

that context pictures take more time to activate their

names than context words do (the ‘‘relative speed hy-

pothesis;’’ see Glaser & D€uungelhoff, 1984). Next, Ex-

periment 3 eliminated the hypothesis that the semantic

facilitation effect was due to the naming of context pic-

tures at a superordinate-category level (e.g., ‘‘bird’’) in-

stead of the basic-category level (e.g., ‘‘swan’’).

In the Discussion of Experiment 3, we concluded that

our results indicate that the assumption of current

models of language production that activated concepts

automatically activate the corresponding lexical repre-

sentations is incorrect. Interestingly, this conclusion is

not new: within the area of Stroop interference research

on the lack of a ‘‘reversed Stroop effect’’ (color-word

reading is not hampered by an incongruent color) is

attributed to the fact that colors do not automatically

activate their names. In addition, we argued that our

conclusion is in line with results obtained in color–color

variants of the Stroop task reported by La Heij et al.

(1993a) and in a picture-naming task with picture con-

text, reported by Humphreys et al. (1995). Finally, our

conclusion also seems in line with Levelt�s (1989) origi-nal proposal that only the conceptual information that

the speaker wants to express (the ‘‘preverbal message’’)

is lexicalized.

The assumption that only the target concept is used

in the process of lexical access was implemented in

Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996) connectionist model as a

threshold at the conceptual level. Only the concept that

is selected (that is, the concept that receives �task acti-

vation�) reaches threshold and activates lexical repre-

sentations. To account for the semantic interference

effect obtained with context words, the additional as-

sumption had to be made that the target concept acti-

vates a cohort of semantically related words. Another

way to achieve this cohort activation is to assume se-

mantically decomposed conceptual representations (se-

mantic features). However, besides arguments that have

been raised against decompositionality (see, e.g., Roe-

lofs, 1992), it is questionable whether feature-based

models will be able to account for the reversal from

semantic interference into semantic facilitation. Given

the general lack of knowledge about the representation

of word meaning, our proposal has the virtue of being a

rather straightforward extension of current language

production models.

To summarize, we propose that conceptually-driven

lexical access starts with the selection of a single con-

ceptual representation (or ‘‘preverbal message’’). Only

this conceptual representation (e.g., ‘‘horse’’) is used in

the process of lexical access. Other concepts, activated

by nontarget objects in the visual field (e.g., the concepts

barn, grass, and fence) do not take part in that process.

To account for semantic errors (e.g., saying �cow� insteadof �horse�) and semantic interference effects in Stroop-

like naming tasks, we assume that the process of lexical

access leads to the activation of a cohort of semantically

related words.

The modified version of Starreveld and La Heij�s(1996) model successfully simulated the reversal from

semantic interference with word context into semantic

facilitation with picture context. Moreover, the model

simulated the lack of semantic interference when a

context word was pre-exposed by 250ms. Importantly,

the model was still capable of simulating the main

findings reported by Starreveld and La Heij: phonolog-

ical facilitation, semantic interference and the interac-

tion between these factors.

In the remainder of this discussion, two issues will be

examined. First, we examine the generalizability of our

findings, obtained with the word translation paradigm,

to other word-production tasks like picture naming. In

that discussion, we will also examine the results of

Glaser and Glaser�s (1989) picture-naming task with

picture context that seem to contradict our present

proposal. Second, we will discuss in what way our model

can be extended to account for results of semantic

priming studies in which target pictures are preceded by

word primes.

In this study we assumed that word translation, like

picture naming, is conceptually mediated and—for that

reason—can be used to study language production (see

Potter, So, von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984; Snodgrass,

1993; see Jescheniak & Levelt, 1994, for a similar use of

the word-translation task). However, this assumption is

not agreed upon by all researchers in the area of bilin-


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gualism. Notably, Kroll and Stewart (1994) proposed

that translation from L1 to L2 is conceptually mediated,

but that translation from L2 to L1 (used in our experi-

ments) is based on word–word associations at a lexical

level. Kroll and Stewart�s proposal was largely based on

their finding that forward translation was affected by a

semantic manipulation (the presentation of words in

randomized or semantically categorized lists), whereas

backward translation was not. However, since then,

many studies have shown that translation from L2 to L1

is affected by semantic factors. Semantic context effects

were reported by La Heij et al. (1990a) and La Heij et al.

(1996) and, in addition, De Groot, Dannenburg, and

Van Hell (1994) reported evidence in favor of semantic

involvement in backward translation. For now, we

conclude that if the presence of semantic context effects

is indicative for conceptual mediation, as argued by

Kroll and Stewart (1994), backward translation in our

experiments was clearly conceptually mediated.

This is not to say that there are no differences be-

tween picture naming and word translation. In the

Discussion of Experiment 3 we mentioned the fact that

pictures differ from words in the speed with which they

activate conceptual representations. This can be inferred

from the observation that word categorization is slower

than picture categorization (e.g., Glaser & D€uungelhoff,1984; Potter & Faulconer, 1975). Consequently, it is

likely that the identification (concept activation) of an

L2 target word will profit more from the presence of a

semantically related context picture than the identifica-

tion of a target picture. Indeed, a comparison between

data reported by Glaser and D€uungelhoff (1984) and

Glaser and Glaser (1989) suggests that picture context

has a larger effect on word categorizing than on picture

categorizing.

Given this conclusion, it seems likely that a seman-

tically related context picture will have a smaller facili-

tating effect on picture naming than on word translation.

This is exactly what was found: La Heij et al. (submit-

ted) reported a small semantic facilitation effect in a

picture-naming task with picture context and Humph-

reys et al. (1995) and Damian and Bowers (in press)

reported no semantic context effect. The only study in

which a semantic interference effect was deserves dis-

cussion.

Glaser and Glaser�s (1989, Experiment 6) reported a

semantic interference effect in a picture-naming task

with picture context. Inspection of this experiment,

however, reveals a number of unusual characteristics

that may have been responsible for this deviant finding.

Damian and Bowers (in press) and La Heij et al. (sub-

mitted) discuss a number of these characteristics. First,

in Glaser and Glaser�s experiment only nine target pic-

tures were used that were selected from only three se-

mantic categories. It seems likely that reducing the

number of semantic categories will decrease the size of a

semantic facilitation effect (see La Heij et al., 1985).

Second, these nine target pictures were also used as

context pictures. Therefore, a picture that had to be

named in one trial could be identical to the picture that

had to be ignored in the next trial. Third, the target

picture was presented above or below a central fixation

point, and the context picture appeared in the opposite

position. The target picture was defined as either the first

or the second picture that appeared on the display (the

‘‘sequential discrimination task’’). With SOAs as small

as 50–100ms this task is difficult and it is conceivable

that in a number of trials instead of the target, the

context picture was selected for naming, resulting in an

error or a time-consuming correction.

In an experiment in which these characteristics of

Glaser and Glaser�s (1989) experiment were eliminated

(for example, the context picture was embedded in the

target picture which rendered target selection much

easier), Damian and Bowers (in press) failed to obtain

semantic interference. La Heij et al. (submitted), used

in their Experiment 1 the same experimental stimuli

and display characteristics as in Glaser and Glaser�sstudy and replicated their semantic interference effect.

They also showed, however, that the semantic inter-

ference effect was accompanied by a relatively large

number of incorrect selections (the context picture was

named instead of the target). In a second experiment,

they showed that the semantic interference effect re-

versed into a small semantic facilitation effect when the

number of pictures was increased, the context pictures

were not part of the target set and the selection of the

target picture was facilitated. La Heij et al. concluded,

as Damian and Bowers did, that Glaser and Glaser�ssemantic interference effect was most probably due to

the unusual characteristics of their experiment. For

that reason, Glaser and Glaser�s semantic interference

effect does not pose a challenge for the modified model

we proposed.

Finally, the relation between our present experiments

and semantic priming studies deserves some discussion.

In Experiment 2, we manipulated SOA and found that

when a context word preceded the target by 250ms, no

semantic context effect was obtained. It is known from

the priming literature that a larger pre-exposure of a

prime word may even lead to semantic facilitation in

picture naming (e.g., Bajo, 1988; Carr, McCauley,

Sperber, & Parmelee, 1982). To the best of our knowl-

edge, there is no picture–word study in which manipu-

lation of SOA resulted in a reversal from semantic

interference into semantic facilitation. If such a result

could be obtained in a word translation task, it would be

as problematic for current models of language produc-

tion as our present effect of context modality. Again, the

problem is in the models� assumption that all activated

concepts activate their names at the lexical level. Be-

cause of this assumption, the conceptual representation


activated by a prime word continuously reactivates its

lexical representation. Due to spreading activation be-

tween related concepts, this reactivation will be stronger

in the case of semantically related prime-target pairs

than in the case of unrelated pairs, resulting in semantic

interference instead of semantic facilitation. The modi-

fication we proposed, that only the target concept is

lexicalized, resolves at least part of this problem: the

prime word activates its conceptual representation but—

due to the threshold—this activation does not feed back

to the lexical level. When the lexical representation of

the prime word is allowed to decay (by introducing a

time interval between prime and target), semantic in-

terference should disappear. Indeed, our simulations

showed that at SOA )250ms context words do not in-

duce a semantic context effect. In our current research

we address the issue whether in a word-translation task

with prime word, manipulation of SOA induces a

reversal from semantic interference into semantic

facilitation and whether our modified model is capable

of accounting for such a change in polarity of the se-

mantic context effect.

In conclusion, we have shown that in a word trans-

lation task, context words induce semantic interference

whereas context pictures induce semantic facilitation.

We have argued that this finding can most easily be

accounted for by assuming that in language production

only the target concept (Levelt�s (1989), ‘‘preverbal

message’’) is lexicalized.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Steve Lupker, Judith Kroll,

Rob Hartsuiker and an anonymous reviewer for very

helpful comments on an earlier version of this

article.

The target words and context stimuli used in Experiments 1 and 2. English translations of the Dutch context words are given in

parentheses.

Target word Translation Related context Unrelated context

Pig Varken Geit (goat) Glas (glass)

Horse Paard Koe (cow) Sok (sock)

Duck Eend Kip (chicken) Mand (basket)

Donkey Ezel Zebra (zebra) Auto (car)

Dog Hond Kat (cat) Sla (lettuce)

Deer Hert Buffel (buffalo) Blouse (blouse)

Pigeon Duif Zwaan (swan) Klok (clock)

Frog Kikker Slak (snail) Arm (arm)

Ant Mier Spin (spider) Deur (door)

Shark Haai Dolfijn (dolphin) Aardbei (strawberry)

Plane Vliegtuig Trein (train) Neus (nose)

Garlic Knoflook Ui (onion) Jas (coat)

Lemon Citroen Aardbei (strawberry) Dolfijn (dolphin)

Rabbit Konijn Eekhoorn (squirrel) Schoen (shoe)

Cherry Kers Appel (apple) Zebra (zebra)

Potato Aardappel Sla (lettuce) Kat (cat)

Watch Horloge Klok (clock) Slak (snail)

Spoon Lepel Vork (fork) Eekhoorn (squirrel)

Bottle Fles Glas (glass) Zwaan (swan)

Saw Zaag Hamer (hammer) Appel (apple)

Knife Mes Bijl (ax) Bank (bench)

Trousers Broek Jas (coat) Koe (cow)

Dress Jurk Trui (sweater) Geit (goat)

Skirt Rok Blouse (blouse) Buffel (buffalo)

Boot Laars Schoen (shoe) Spin (spider)

Leg Been Arm (arm) Ui (onion)

Eye Oog Neus (nose) Bijl (ax)

Suitcase Koffer Mand (basket) Vork (fork)

Window Raam Deur (door) Trui (sweater)

Chair Stoel Bank (bench) Trein (train)

Glove Handschoen Sok (sock) Kip (chicken)

Bike Fiets Auto (car) Hamer (hammer)

Appendix A


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The target words and context stimuli used in Experiment 3. English translations of the Dutch context words are given in parentheses.

Target word

(English)

Translation

(Dutch)

Related basic

level

Unrelated

basic level

Related super

level

Unrelated

super level

Car Auto Motor (motor) Trui(sweater) Voertuig

(vehicle)

Groente

(vegetable)

Bike Fiets Trein (train) Perzik (peach) Voertuig

(vehicle)

Meubel

(furniture)

Plane Vliegtuig Boot (boat) Tafel (table) Voertuig

(vehicles)

Fruit

(fruit)

Onion Ui Tomaat (tomato) Hemd (shirt) Groente

(vegetable)

Kleding

(clothes)

Carrot Wortel Boon (bean) Sok (sock) Groente

(vegetable)

Kleur (color)

Lettuce Sla Erwt (pea) Been (leg) Groente

(vegetable)

Dier (animal)

Couch Bank Tafel (table) Hond (dog) Meubel

(furniture)

Beroep

(occupation)

Closet Kast Plank (shelf) Banaan

(banana)

Meubel

(furniture)

Lichaamsdeel

(body part)

Chair Stoel Bed (bed) Rood (red) Meubel

(furniture)

Gebouw

(building)

Grape Druif Perzik (peach) Huis (house) Fruit (fruit) Voertuig (vehicle)

Lemon Citroen Banaan

(banana)

Arm (arm) Fruit (fruit) Meubel (furniture)

Cherry Kers Appel (apple) Blauw (blue) Fruit (fruit) Dier (animal)

Dress Jurk Trui (sweater) Erwt (pea) Kleding (clothes) Fruit (fruit)

Trousers Broek Hemd (shirt) Dokter (doctor) Kleding (clothes) Beroep

(occupation)

Coat Jas Sok (sock) Flat (flat) Kleding (clothes) Gebouw

(building)

Yellow Geel Rood (red) Konijn (rabbit) Kleur (color) Voertuig (vehicle)

Target word

(English)

Translation

(Dutch)

Related Basic

Level

Unrelated Basic

Level

Related Super

Level

Unrelated Super

Level

Black Zwart Groen (green) Plank (shelf) Kleur (color) Beroep (occupation)

Purple Paars Blauw (blue) Boon (bean) Kleur (color) Meubel

(furniture)

Horse Paard Kat (cat) Museum

(museum)

Dier (animal) Lichaamsdeel

(body part)

Lion Leeuw Konijn (rabbit) Enkel (ankle) Dier (animal) Fruit (fruit)

Pig Varken Hond (dog) Bed (bed) Dier (animal) Kleding (clothes)

Lawyer Advocaat Dokter (doctor) Appel (apple) Beroep

(occupation)

Groente

(vegetable)

Teacher Leraar Bakker (baker) Groen (green) Beroep

(occupation)

Lichaamsdeel

(body part)

Dentist Tandarts Slager (butcher) Boot (boat) Beroep

(occupation)

Kleur (color)

Eye Oog Been (leg) Kat (cat) Lichaamsdeel

(body part)

Voertuig

(vehicle)

Chest Borst Enkel (ankle) Motor (motor) Lichaamsdeel

(body part)

Kleur (color)

Face Gezicht Arm (arm) Slager (butcher) Lichaamsdeel

(body part)

Gebouw

(building)

Church Kerk Flat (flat) Bakker (baker) Gebouw

(building)

Groente

(vegetable)

Factory Fabriek Museum

(museum)

Tomaat

(tomato)

Gebouw

(building)

Dier (animal)

Farm Boerderij Huis (house) Trein (train) Gebouw

(building)

Kleding (clothes)

Appendix B


Appendix C

Appendix D

Simulations with Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996) model of

lexical access.

Starreveld and La Heij�s (1996) model consists of two major

layers, a layer of concept nodes and a layer of phonological

nodes. For our present purposes, these phonological nodes can

also be interpreted as ‘‘lexical representations’’ or ‘‘lemmas’’

(Kempen & Huijbers, 1983; Levelt et al., 1999). As indicated in

Fig. 1, at the layer of concept nodes, semantic (categorical)

relations between concepts are represented by connections be-

tween the corresponding concept nodes. In the model, these

connections are bi-directional and have the same weights (wcc).

All connections between the nodes at the conceptual layer and

the corresponding word nodes at the lexical layer are bi-direc-

tional and have the same weights (wcp). A third layer (not

shown in Fig. 1) consists of input nodes that represents the

input from the visual system to the concept layer (in the case of

pictures or to-be-translated words) and to the lexical layer (in

the case of context words). The connections to these layers have

a weight wi. A node representing the task of picture naming (or

word translation) represents the result of an attentional selec-

tion process and connects with weight wt to the target concept.

In each iteration, the activation of each node i(Ai) at time t þ 1

is calculated using the CALM-activation rule (Murre, 1992)

Aiðt þ 1Þ ¼ ð1� kÞAiðtÞ þei

1þ ei½1� ð1� kÞAiðtÞ�

with

ei ¼X

j

wijAjðtÞ:

Using this rule, the minimum activation value of each node

is 0, and the maximum value is 1. The first component of the

rule, ð1� kÞAiðtÞ, represents the autonomous decay of a node.

The presentation of a target (picture or to-be-translated word)

and of a context (picture or word) can be simulated by pre-

senting input activation Ain to the corresponding input nodes.

Selection of a response word takes place when the activation of

a lexical node exceeds that of all other lexical nodes by a critical

amount c (see Roelofs, 1992, for a selection mechanism that

The target words and context stimuli used in Experiment 4. English translations of the Dutch context words are given in paren-

theses.

Target word Translation Related context Unrelated context

Reply Antwoord Anker (anchor) Ketel (kettle)

Can Blikje Bliksem (lightning) Vest (cardigan)

Farmer Boer Boek (book) Lipstick (lipstick)

Fur Bont Borstel (brush) Wiel (wheel)

Neighbour Buurman Bureau (office) Potlood (pencil)

Curtain Gordijn Golf (wave) Longen (lungs)

Shark Haai Hamer (hammer) Kruis (cross)

Trade Handel Hand (hand) Konijn (rabbit)

Witch Heks Hek (fence) Kanon (canon)

Office Kantoor Kanon (canon) Sax (saxophone)

Throat Keel Ketel (kettle) Hamer (hammer)

Suitcase Koffer Kompas (compass) Paprika (paprika)

Bullet Kogel Konijn (rabbit) Anker (anchor)

Grain Korrel Kopje (cup) Palm (palm)

Herb Kruid Kruis (cross) Veer (feather)

Army Leger Lepel (spoon) Boek (book)

Ribbon Lint Lipstick (lipstick) Kompas (compass)

Fate Lot Longen (lungs) Hek (fence)

War Oorlog Oor (ear) Kopje (cup)

Horse Paard Paprika (paprika) Bliksem (lightning)

Suit Pak Palm (palm) Oor (ear)

Arrow Pijl Pijp (pipe) Lepel (spoon)

Mail Post Potlood (pencil) Teen (toe)

Council Raad Raam (window) Borstel (brush)

Juice Sap Saxofoon (saxophone) Raam (window)

Candy Snoepje Snoer (wire) Bureau (office)

Sign Teken Teen (toe) Uil (owl)

Looks Uiterlijk Uil (owl) Pijp (pipe)

Union Vakbond Varken (pig) Hand (hand)

Cattle Vee Veer (feather) Snoer (wire)

Paint Verf Vest (cardigan) Golf (wave)

Cradle Wieg Wiel (wheel) Varken (pig)


incorporates a similar parameter). If the selection process is

more difficult, the selection will take more iterations, and the

simulated RT will be longer (each iteration represented a time

step of Dt, which was set at 10ms). The parameter values used

in the original simulations were as follows (for further details,

see Starreveld & La Heij, 1996):

c ¼ 0:071; wcp ¼ 0:025; wi ¼ 0:14; wt ¼ 1:6;

wcc ¼ 0:01; k ¼ 0:03; Ain ¼ 0:025; Dt ¼ 10:

In the simulations of the model depicted in Fig. 2, a

threshold was introduced at the conceptual level with a value

of 0.4 and concepts activated semantically related lexical

representations (cohort activation) with a weight of .003 (12%

of the weight of the link between a concept and its correct

name, wcp). To obtain semantic facilitation with picture con-

text and semantic interference with word context, only the

amount of spreading activation within the conceptual system

(wcc) had to be increased (from 0.01 to 0.03). With this ad-

justed value, the model was able to simulate the pattern of

results obtained by Starreveld and La Heij (1996; semantic

interference, phonological facilitation & an interaction be-

tween semantic & phonological relatedness, all with word

context) and our present finding of semantic facilitation with

picture context (see the simulation results in Table 2). A sat-

isfactory quantitative fit with all empirical observations was

obtained when the value of Dt was increased from 10 to 20ms.

The context effects that were obtained with these modifications

are shown in Table 2.

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Bloem and La Heij 2003