Phonological activation of non-produced words. The dynamics of lexical access in speech production

[eng] Speaking can be considered a goal-directed behavior because speakers have to retrieve the appropriate words and phonemes from their mental lexicon. However, observational and experimental evidence suggests that during the lexical and phonological retrieval processes other words than the intended ones are activated to some degree. Under this scenario, it is necessary to postulate selection mechanisms in charge of determining, among the activated representations, which ones will be prioritized and further processed in order to finally utter the speech signal. How does the control mechanism work that allows speakers to focus on the appropriate set of representations and reject the non-appropriate ones? It is generally agreed that the most relevant parameter that guides word and phoneme selection is the level of activation of the corresponding representations, in the sense that the most activated representations at a specific moment will be the ones selected. In addition, theories of speech production agree that the selection mechanisms also take into account the activation level of other non-target representations, in the sense that the selection of one representation is more difficult the more activated other competing representations are. According to these two assumptions, the selection of a word would depend on two parameters: a) the amount of activation that this word receives from the conceptual system and b) the level of activation of other representations at the moment of selection. In order to have a clear understanding of the mechanisms that speakers employ to decide which representations to select, we first need to specify under which circumstances this selection mechanism takes place. In particular, this dissertation tries to describe the pattern of activation during lexical access. Specifically, which words and phonemes are activated during the lexicalization process of the intended concept? This is an important issue because the types of processes in charge of encoding/selecting information at ...