The role of phonetic and orthographic similarity in picture-word interference.

Picture-word interference refers to the fact that when a picture (i.e., line drawing) is presented with a word superimposed, picture-naming latency is longer than when the same picture is presented alone. This phenomenon, like the Stroop phenomenon, seems to be strongly influenced by the nature of the superimposed word. In the present paper the effects of phonetic and orthographic similarity between the word and the picture's name were investigated in order to get a clearer idea of the role these factors play in the picture-naming process. Both orthographic and phonetic similarity were found to facilitate picture naming in comparison to an unrelated word condition although not with respect to a picture alone condition. Further, the data suggest that this facilitation is not an output phenomenon and, as such, can be separated from the response competition processes that lead to the basic interference effect. Instead, the locus of these effects appears to be the name-retrieval process with orthographic and phonetic information from the word aiding in the search for the picture's name. RESUME L'interference mot-image se rapporte au fait que lorsqu'une image (i.e., un dessin) est presentee avec un mot en surimpression, la latence d'identification de I'image est plus longue que lorsque la meme image est presentee seule. Ce phenomene, comme celui de Stroop, semble etre fortement influence par la nature du mot en surimpression. Les effets dus a la similitude phonetique et orthographique existant entre le mot et le nom de I'image ont ete etudies dans le but de clarifier le role joue par ces facteurs dans le processus d'identification de I'image. Les similitudes orthographiques et phonetiques facilitent toutes deux ('identification de I'image comparativement a la condition ou un mot non relie est utilise mais non par rapport a la situation ou I'image seule doit etre identifiee. De plus, les donnees suggerent que cette facilitation n'est pas liee a la sortie de I'information et peut, en ce sens, etre dissociee des processus de competition de la reponse qui conduisent a I'effet d'interference. Les effets trouves resideraient plutot dans le processus de recouvrement du mot dont la similitude orthographique et phonetique favorise la recherche du nom de I'image. What are the mechanisms involved in the simultaneous processing of two inputs when the observer must respond to only one of those inputs? This question, in many shapes and forms, has been with us at least since the *This research was supported by Grant A6333 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The author would like to thank Anne Kennedy, Eric Cartman and Mike Callahan for their help in the data collection and analyses and Albert Katz for his many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Address reprint requests to Stephen J. Lupker, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario,