The cumulative semantic cost does not reflect lexical selection by competition.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• The cumulative semantic cost phenomenon describes increased picture naming times with sequential within-category items.
• Previous models suggested this cost relies on lexical selection via competition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if the cumulative semantic cost necessitates lexical selection by competition.
• To differentiate the semantic cost in picture naming versus word naming tasks.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Participants performed a picture naming task in sequences.
• Experiment 2: Participants performed a word naming task preceded by a determiner.
• Experiment 3: Intermingled picture and word naming with determiners, replicating findings and testing cross-modal effects.

Main Results:

• The cumulative semantic cost was replicated for picture naming (Experiment 1).
• No cumulative semantic cost was observed for word naming (Experiment 2).
• Picture naming induced a cost for subsequent words, but word naming did not induce a cost for subsequent pictures (Experiment 3).

Conclusions:

• The cumulative semantic cost appears to originate before lexical selection.
• Findings support a model where the cost results from incremental changes in semantic-to-lexical connection weights.