Why does lexical selection have to be so hard? Comment on Abdel Rahman and Melinger's swinging lexical network proposal

The semantic interference effect, in the picture-word interference paradigm, has played an important role in the development of certain models of lexical selection. However, and aside from the semantic interference effect, the typical pattern that is observed when contrasting semantically related and unrelated distractors in the picture-word paradigm is facilitation. We have argued that semantic facilitation, and not semantic interference, is informative about the dynamics of lexical selection. Semantic interference in the picture-word interference paradigm arises at a post-lexical level of processing. Abdel Rahman and Melinger (2009 this issue) defend the hypothesis of lexical-selection-by-competition and argue that when the hypothesis is supplemented with additional assumptions, it can be reconciled with findings that are otherwise difficult to explain. Here we explore Abdel Rahman and Melinger's proposal. We argue that it is not clear that the authors have in fact succeeded in explaining the findings they set out to explain. In conclusion, we suggest that the liabilities of retaining the hypothesis of lexical-selection-by-competition outweigh the explanatory scope of that view.

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