Conceptual coherence affects phonological activation of context objects during object naming

In 4 picture-word interference experiments, speakers named a target object that was presented with a context object. Using auditory distractors that were phonologically related or unrelated either to the target object or the context object, the authors assessed whether phonological processing was confined to the target object or not. Phonological activation of the context objects was reliably observed if the target and context objects were embedded in a conceptually coherent scene (e.g., if the picture showed a mouse eating some cheese), regardless of whether the target was cued by its thematic role (agent vs. patient) or by color. However, this activation dissipated if the two objects were presented in an arbitrary object array (e.g., if the cheese was presented along with a finger). These findings suggest that conceptual coherence among multiple objects affects the information flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning.