Concurrent processing of words and their replacements during speech

Two picture naming experiments, in which an initial picture was occasionally replaced with another (target) picture, were conducted to study the temporal coordination of abandoning one word and resuming with another word in speech production. In Experiment 1, participants abandoned saying the initial name, and resumed with the name of the target picture. This triggered both interrupted (e.g., Mush- ...scooter) and completed (mushroom ...scooter) productions of the initial name. We found that the time from beginning naming the initial picture to ending it was longer when the target picture was visually degraded than when it was intact. In Experiment 2, participants abandoned saying the initial name, but without resuming. There was no visual degradation effect, and thus the effect did not seem to be driven by detection of the stopping cue. These findings demonstrate that planning a new word can begin before the initial word is abandoned, so that both words can be processed concurrently.