Neighing, barking, and drumming horses—object related sounds help and hinder picture naming.

Abstract

The study presented here investigated how environmental sounds influence picture naming. In a series of four experiments participants named pictures (e.g., the picture of a horse) while hearing task-irrelevant sounds (e.g., neighing, barking, or drumming). Experiments 1 and 2 established two findings, facilitation from congruent sounds (e.g., picture: horse, sound: neighing) and interference from semantically related sounds (e.g., sound: barking), both relative to unrelated sounds (e.g., sound: drumming). Experiment 3 replicated the effects in a situation in which participants were not familiarized with the sounds prior to the experiment. Experiment 4 replicated the congruency facilitation effect, but showed that semantic interference was not obtained with distractor sounds which were not associated with target pictures (i.e., were not part of the response set). The general pattern of facilitation from congruent sound distractors and interference from semantically related sound distractors resembles the pattern commonly observed with distractor words. This parallelism suggests that the underlying processes are not specific to either distractor words or distractor sounds but instead reflect general aspects of semantic-lexical selection in language production. The results indicate that language production theories need to include a competitive selection mechanism at either the lexical processing stage, or the prelexical processing stage, or both. (PsycINFO Database Record

Localizing semantic interference from distractor sounds in picture naming: A dual-task study

“…In a recent study we tested this proposed specificity of the effect by using environmental distractor sounds instead of distractor words (e.g., BARKING horse vs. DRUMMING drum , when the picture shows a horse; Mädebach et al, 2017). We likewise observed semantic interference, which shows that semantic interference is not restricted to tasks that involve distractor words.…”

“…In a recent study (Mädebach, Wöhner, Kieseler, & Jescheniak, 2017) we observed that semantically related environmental distractors sounds (e.g., BARKING dog ) interfere with picture naming (e.g., "horse^) more strongly than unrelated environmental distractor sounds (e.g., DRUMMING drum ). This semantic interference effect from distractor sounds resembles the one typically obtained with distractor words, which has been central for the debate on the mechanism of lexical selection.…”

“…For the shape classification task (T1) a filled red square and circle were used (diameter 1.1°at 60 cm distance). For the picture naming task (T2) the same materials as Mädebach et al, 2017) were used (for a full list see the supplement). Stimuli were 32 black line drawings of objects (maximum 8.4°× 8.4°) and corresponding sounds (normalized in amplitude; sampling rate = 48 kHz; mean duration = 1,246 ms, range = 702-1,572 ms).…”

“…The T2 sound started 200 ms before T2 picture onset. This distractor SOA had proved most sensitive to the semantic interference effect in Mädebach et al (2017). T1 and T2 responses were registered starting with their respective target stimulus onsets until 3 s after T2 picture onset.…”

The Embodied Penman: Effector‐Specific Motor–Language Integration During Handwriting

“…Just as modality-specific (e.g., Mulatti, Treccani, & Job, 2014;Vermeulen, Corneille, & Niedenthal, 2008) and category-specific (e.g., Madebach, Wohner, Kieseler, & Jescheniak, 2017) information can yield varying grounding effects across perceptual dimensions, so can effector-specific words affect processes in the motor domain. Note, however, that action mechanisms possess unique functional features (Prinz, Beisert, & Herwig, 2013;Shadmehr, Smith, & Krakauer, 2010;Shin, Proctor, & Capaldi, 2010), so that their interaction with higher-order operations may not be directly inferred from perception-oriented studies.…”