The effect of word-frequency on lexical selection in speech production: Evidence from semantic homogeneous naming contexts

We report an experiment exploring the extent to which the process of lexical selection in speech production is sensitive to word frequency. Participants were asked to name pictures in two sets of lists: semantic homogeneous (all pictures from the same semantic category) and semantic heterogeneous sets (pictures from various semantic categories). Naming latencies were slower for the former type of lists, replicating the semantic interference effects reported before. Importantly, the magnitude of the semantic interference effect was not modulated by the word’s frequency value. That is, the effects of a fixed semantic context were similar regardless of the picture’s name frequency. This result is interpreted as revealing that word frequency does not affect the ease with which lexical selection is achieved.

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