NICI > Publications > 1998 > Producing simple sentences: Results from picture word interference experiments
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Reference
Schriefers, H.J., Teruel, E., & Meinshausen, R.M. (1998). Producing simple sentences: Results from picture word interference experiments. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 609-632.
Abstract
Five experiments investigated the size of the grammatical advance planning unit in the production of simple sentences with transitive and intransitive verbs. The four main experiments used an extension of the picture-word interference task. Native speakers of German described pictures of simple scenes (an actor performing an action, or an actor performing an action with an object). The word order of the target utterances was systematically manipulated (verb in utterance initial position or in utterance final position). In addition, speakers were presented with verbs as distractor words which were semantically related or unrelated to the verb of the picture description. For target utterances with intransitive verbs, no effects of the distractor conditions were obtained. For utterances with transitive verbs in initial position, utterance onset latencies were longer for the condition with semantically related distractor verbs than for the condition with unrelated distractor verbs. When the target verb did not occur in utterance initial position, the semantic interference effect was not obtained. These results suggest that the verb is not automatically and obligatorily part of the grammatical advance planning unit for finite clauses.