The DOI matches its Crossref record; 88 of the 88 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Lexical selection is not by competition: A reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm.
Abstract
The dominant view in the field of lexical access in speech production maintains that selection of a word becomes more difficult as the levels of activation of nontarget words increase--selection by competition. The authors tested this prediction in two sets of experiments. First, the authors show that participants are faster to name pictures of objects (e.g., "bed") in the context of semantically related verb distractors (e.g., sleep) compared with unrelated verb distractors (e.g., shoot). In the second set of experiments, the authors show that target naming latencies (e.g., "horse") are, if anything, faster for within--category semantically close distractor words (e.g., zebra) than for within--category semantically far distractor words (e.g., whale). In the context of previous research, these data ground a new empirical generalization: As distractor words become semantically closer to the target concepts--all else being equal--target naming is facilitated. This fact means that lexical selection does not involve competition, and consequently, that the semantic interference effect does not reflect a lexical level process. This conclusion has important implications for models of lexical access and interpretations of Stroop-like interference effects.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions
Stroop, J. R. (1935) · Journal of Experimental Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0054651 · Cited by 18,622
Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review.
MacLeod, C. M. (1991) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.109.2.163 · Cited by 5,500
A theory of lexical access in speech production
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x99001776 · Cited by 5,136
Speaking: from intention to articulation
(1989) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.27-1947 · Cited by 5,003
McClelland, J. L., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1981) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.88.5.375 · Cited by 4,889
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory
Bourne, L. E. (1977) · Cited by 4,328
A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production.
Dell, G. S. (1986) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037//0033-295x.93.3.283 · Cited by 3,236
Cohen, J., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993) · Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers · doi:10.3758/bf03204507 · Cited by 2,802
DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy
Forster, K. I., & Forster, J. C. (2003) · Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers · doi:10.3758/bf03195503 · Cited by 2,759
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1006/jmla.1994.1008 · Cited by 2,656 · cited 3×
“This semantic context effect has been observed in word translation (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Vigliocco, Lauer, et al., 2002), picture naming (e.g., Belke et al., 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Santesteban et al., 2006; Vigliocco, Vinson, et al., 2002), and word reading with determiner production…”
Background
Cited by
Frequency drives lexical access in reading but not in speaking: The frequency-lag hypothesis.
Gollan, T. H., Slattery, T. J., Goldenberg, D., Van Assche, E., Duyck, W., & Rayner, K. (2011) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/a0022256 · Cited by 304
Semantic context effects in language production: A swinging lexical network proposal and a review
Abdel Rahman, R., & Melinger, A. (2009) · Language and Cognitive Processes · doi:10.1080/01690960802597250 · Cited by 257
Neural basis of bilingual language control
Calabria, M., Costa, A., Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J. (2018) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.13879 · Cited by 190
Self-citationWhat did we learn from forty years of research on semantic interference? A Bayesian meta-analysis
Bürki, A., Elbuy, S., Madec, S., & Vasishth, S. (2020) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/j.jml.2020.104125 · Cited by 124
Strijkers, K., & Costa, A. (2011) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00356 · Cited by 106
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Mahon, B. Z., Costa, A., Peterson, R., Vargas, K. A., & Caramazza, A.
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
- Published
- 2007
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 503-535
- ISSN
- 0278-7393 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1285
- OpenAlex
- W2134153968
- Cited by
- 494
- References
- 88
- FWCI
- 8.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Funders
- Spanish and United States Governments
- National Science Foundation
- National Institutes of Health (DC04542)
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Lexical selection is not by competition: A reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/0278-7393.33.3.503
- The paper
- Mahon, B. Z., Costa, A., Peterson, R., Vargas, K. A., & Caramazza, A. (2007). Lexical selection is not by competition: A reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.33.3.503
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.