The multiple phonological activation in Chinese spoken word production: An ERP study supporting cascaded model

A central issue in spoken word production concerns how activation is transmitted from semantic to phonological levels. The current study investigated the issue of seriality and cascadedness in Chinese spoken word production, via the combined semantic blocked paradigm (with homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks) and picture-word interference paradigm (with phonologically related, mediated and unrelated distractors). Naming latencies data showed a mediated effect via comparing mediated and unrelated distractors in homogeneous blocks, a phonological facilitation effect via comparing phonologically related and unrelated distractors in homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks, and a semantic interference effect via comparing homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks. Critically, cluster-based permutation test of ERP data demonstrated a mediated effect around 266-326ms and an overlapped pattern of semantic interference effect around 264-418ms and phonological facilitation effect around 210-310ms in homogeneous or around 236-316ms in heterogeneous blocks. These findings indicated that speakers activate phonological nodes of non-targets, and present a cascadedness pattern of the transmission from semantics to phonology in Chinese spoken production. The present study sheds new insight on the neural correlates of semantic and phonological effects, and provides behavioral and electrophysiological evidences for the cascaded model within a theoretical framework of lexical competition in speech production.