The unseen, the seen, and the spoken: Latent and overt priming in cyclic picture naming

Language production entails selecting words in the face of internally, and sometimes externally, driven competition that influences the long-term accessibility of both selected words and competitors. Because both endogenous and externally presented competitors usually result in semantic interference, it is often assumed that they engage the same underlying processes. We question this assumption. Specifically, we propose that latent primes may more naturally commingle with endogenous lexical activation whereas overt primes elicit strong control processes. Two experiments examined the effects of latent (masked) and overt (picture-word) priming in combination with cyclic picture naming of small sets of taxonomically or thematically related or unrelated pictures. A subsequent continuous picture naming phase was designed to assess enduring effects of service as a prime or target. Only taxonomic relations showed substantial interference in cyclic naming. Latent priming tended to increase interference for taxonomic relations, but it produced facilitation for thematic relations. In contrast, overt priming induced interference for both types of relation, indicating exertion of cognitive control. In the continuous picture naming phases, accessibility was hindered for previously presented latent primes (Experiment 1) but enhanced for previously overt primes (Experiment 2). Surprisingly, interference in cyclic naming did not carry forward to the continuous phase. These findings suggest that masked priming may be a viable intervention in the internal dynamics of lexical selection. In contrast, they also add to the body of evidence questioning the validity of using picture-word procedures to study inherent semantic interference.