How not to revisit Highway 61: negative repetition effects in a post-cue naming task

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Repetition priming is a well-documented phenomenon in cognitive psychology.
• However, negative repetition effects, where repeated items are processed slower, are less understood.
• Understanding these effects offers insights into cognitive processes like memory and attention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the conditions under which negative repetition effects occur in a naming task.
• To explore the underlying cognitive mechanisms, specifically the mapping from semantic representations to names.
• To determine the role of competition and memory in these effects.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed a post-cue naming task with repeated picture pairs.
• Reaction times were measured for naming previously presented targets and distractors.
• The task was varied using words instead of pictures and a semantic categorization task.

Main Results:

• A negative repetition effect was observed: previously unselected pictures (distractors) were named faster than previously named pictures (targets).
• This effect was absent when using words or a semantic categorization task.
• The effect was contingent on the presence of a selection cue and memory for prior naming.

Conclusions:

• The negative repetition effect in picture naming reflects competition during the semantic-to-name mapping process.
• This effect is dependent on memory for previous semantic naming acts.
• It suggests a form of speech monitoring engaged during competitive naming.