Jescheniak, J. D. 1 , Oppermann, F. 1 , Schriefers, H. 2 , Klaus, J. 1 & Berwig, M. 1
1 University of Leipzig
2 Radboud University, Nijmegen
In a set of three picture-word interference experiments we measured the phonological activation of verbs produced in isolation and in sentence contexts. Distractors that were phonologically related to the verb affected speech onset latencies in both verb production and sentence production, but in different ways. In verb production, there was substantial facilitation. In sentence production, the effect was attenuated and eventually turned into interference. These data show that the verb is phonologically activated before speech onset during sentence production. In addition, the modulation of the phonological effect as a function of utterance format provides further evidence for models of phonological encoding of complex utterances that assume a serial position coding in terms of a graded activation pattern (e.g., Dell, 1986; Jescheniak, Schriefers, & Hantsch, 2003).