Mediated and Convergent Lexical Priming in Language Production: A Comment on Levelt et al. (1991)

Levelt et al. (1991) argued that modular semantic and phonological stage theories of lexical access in language production are to be preferred over interactive spreading-activation theories (e.g., Dell, 1986). As evidence, they show no mediated semantic-phonological priming during picture naming: Retrieval of sheep primes goat, but the activation of goat is not transmitted to its phonological relative, goal. This research reconciles this result with spreading-activation theories and shows how the absence of mediated priming coexists with the convergent priming necessary to account for mixed semantic-phonological speech errors. The analysis leads to the proposal that the language-production system may best be characterized as globally modular but locally interactive.