ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Lang. Sci.
Sec. Language Processing
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/flang.2025.1625213
What drives response time and accuracy in image naming? Moderators in the relationship between number of phonological neighbours and image naming performance
Provisionally accepted
- 1Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, United States
- 2University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, United States
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Abstract Insights into phonological activation patterns during lexical retrieval have been gained from simple image naming and picture word interference paradigm (PWIP) studies. Simple image naming studies allow for the manipulation of phonological variables, such as the number of phonological neighbours (NPN). PWIP studies allow for the manipulation of the relationship between a target and distractor, considering the effects of lexical co-activation. PWIP studies have reported a phonological facilitation effect when phonologically related stimuli are introduced during certain time-frames We conducted a series of experiments in young, neurotypical adults using images that were validated across a number of measures known to affect naming performance. A simple image naming experiment (Experiment 1) was followed by two PWIP experiments, where the SOAs were set at +300ms (Experiment 2) and +150ms (Experiment 3) and images were paired with phonologically related or unrelated distractors. Across all experiments, we found that NPN was modulated by other variables such as age-of-acquisition, and image familiarity. While a main effect of distractor type was obtained for the PWIP experiments, there was no interaction between NPN and distractor type. The findings highlight the complex nature of NPN, and the subtle influences that NPN has on picture naming process.
Keywords: picture naming, Phonological neighbours, picture word interference paradigm, image familiarity, Age-of-acquisition
Received: 08 May 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hashimoto, Heuer and Cho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Naomi Hashimoto, nhashimo@emich.edu
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