Early planning of response content and form when answering questions

Early form approaches to language production suggest that interlocutors plan both the content and form of their utterances as early as possible while their partner is speaking. Late form approaches suggest that the content of an interlocutor's response is planned early, but the form of the response is planned closer to the time when the interlocutor will begin speaking. We tested these accounts in a question-answering paradigm modeled after Corps and Pickering (2024). Participants answered trivia questions. The information required to answer each question was either presented early (Which animal barks and is also a common household pet?) or late (Which animal is a common household pet and also barks?) in the question. The target answer was either short (typically, one word) or long (more than one word). Participants responded more quickly when the critical information appeared early in the question and when the answer was short. There was also an interaction, where the effect of answer length was more pronounced when the critical information appeared late in the question. The results are consistent with the early form account.