Lexical access in object naming involves the activation of a set oflexical candidates, the selection of the appropriate (or target) item, and the phonological encoding of that item. Two views of lexical access in naming are compared. From one view, the 2-stage theory, phonological activation follows selection of the target item and is restricted to that item. From the other view, which is most explicit in activation-spreading theories, all activated lexical candidates are phonologically activated to some extent. A series of experiments is reported in which subjects performed acoustic lexical decision during object naming at different stimulus-onset asynchronies. The experiments show semantic activation of lexical candidates and phonological activation of the target item, but no phonological activation of other semantically activated items. This supports the 2-stage view. Moreover, a mathematical model embodying the 2-stage view is fully compatible with the lexical decision data obtained at different stimulus-onset asynchronies.One of a speaker's core skills is to lexicalize the concepts intended for expression. Lexicalization proceeds at a rate of two to three words per second in normal spontaneous speech, but doubling this rate is possible and not exceptional. The skill of lexicalizing a content word involves two components. The first one is to select the appropriate lexical item from among some tens of thousands of alternatives in the mental lexicon. The second one is to phonologically encode the selected item, that is, to retrieve its sound form, to create a phonological representation for the item in its context, and to prepare its articulatory program. An extensive review of the literature on lexicalization can be found in Levelt (1989). This article addresses only one aspect of lexicalization, namely its time course. In particular, we examine whether the selection of an item and its phonological encoding can be considered to occur in two successive, nonoverlapping stages.We acknowledge the invaluable contributions of John Nagengast and Johan Weustink, who programmed the computer-based experiments; ofGer Desserjer and Hans Fransen, who ran the experiments and assisted in data analysis; and of lnge Tarim, who provided graphical assistance. We also acknowledge Gary Dell's and Picnic Zwitserlood's detailed comments on an earlier version of this article, as well as the thorough comments of an anonymous reviewer.

Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-languageuniversals and cross-languagedisparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target-name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g.,Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages.

Picture naming is a widely used technique in psycholinguistic studies. Here, we describe new online resources that our project has compiled and made available to researchers on the world wide web at http://crl.ucsd.edu/~aszekely/ipnp/. The website provides access to a wide range of picture stimuli and related norms in seven languages. Picture naming norms, including indices of name agreement and latency, for 520 black-and-white drawings of common objects and 275 concrete transitive and intransitive actions are presented. Norms for age-of-acquisition, word-frequency, familiarity, goodness-of-depiction, and visual complexity are included. An on-line database query system can be used to select a specific range of stimuli, based on parameters of interest for a wide range of studies on healthy and clinical populations, as well as studies of language development.

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The degree of interference caused by different kinds of stimuli on memory for tonal pitch was studied. Musically trained and untrained subjects heard a sequence of two tones separated by an interval of 5 sec. The tones were either identical in pitch or differed by a semitone. Subjects had to decide whether the tones were identical or not. The interval was filled with tonal, verbal, or visual material under attended and unattended conditions. The results revealed clear group differences. Musically trained subjects' retention of the first test tone was only affected by the interposition of other tones. In contrast, the performance of musically untrained subjects was also affected by verbal and visual items. The findings are discussed in the framework of Baddeley's (1986) working-memory model.In a number of experiments, Deutsch studied the effect of short sequences of tones on the retention of tonal pitch (see Deutsch, 1982, for an overview). These experiments principally employed the same method, which is illustrated in Figure 1. Subjects heard a first test tone followed by a series of six interpolated tones varying in pitch. All tones had a duration of 200 msec and were separated by short pauses of 300 msec. At the end, there was a longer pause of 2,000 msec duration and then a second test tone was presented that was either identical in pitch with the first test tone or not. The subjects were asked to compare the pitches of the first and second test tones. The dependent variable was the number of errors. Deutsch mainly varied the frequency and the position of a critical interpolated tone as independent variables, holding the timing skeleton and the number of intervening tones constant. She found maximal interference if the critical tone was the second one in the series of intervening tones and if it differed from the initial test tone by two thirds of a tone. In this condition, subjects made 51 % errors if the two test tones were different and 21% if they were identical (Deutsch, 1975).Deutsch explained this effect in terms of lateral inhibition and provided additional evidence for this claim by showing disinhibitory effects on the first test tone by inhibition of the second interpolated tone (Deutsch, 1984;