Phonological overlap affects lexical selection during sentence production

Theories of lexical production differ in whether they allow phonological processes to affect lexical selection directly. Whereas some accounts, such as interactive activation accounts, predict (weak) early effects of phonological processes during lexical selection via feedback connections, strictly serial architectures do not make this prediction. We present evidence from lexical selection during unscripted sentence production that lexical selection is affected by the phonological form of recently produced words. In a video description experiment, participants described scenes that were compatible with several near-meaning-equivalent verbs. We found that speakers were less likely than expected by chance to select a verb form that would result in phonological onset overlap with the subject of the sentence. Additional evidence from the distribution of disfluencies immediately preceding the verb argues that this effect is due to early effects on lexical selection, rather than later corrective processes, such as self-monitoring. Taken together, these findings support accounts that allow early feedback from phonological processes to word-level nodes, even during lexical selection.