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...Aaron, Steinmetz, & Pisoni, 2010). Finally, in studies of bilingualism, fluent bilinguals performed better in a letter fluency task than monolinguals, which was attributed to enhanced executive control abilities in bilinguals compared with monolinguals (e.g., Festman, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Münte, 2010; Luo, Luk, & Bialystok, 2010). Based on these findings, one might expect that variations in executive control ability within a group of healthy adults could also be related to differences in speech production. Executive control processes have been conceptualized in slightly different ways (e.g., Baddeley, 1986; Miller & Cohen, 2001; Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). In general, executive control refers to the regulatory processes that ensure that our perceptions, thoughts, and actions are in accordance with our goals. It is often assumed that executive control consists of several component processes. An influential decomposition of executive control has been proposed by Miyake and colleagues (e.g., Friedman et al., 2006; Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, & Wager, 2000). They distinguish three types of executive control abilities: (a) monitoring and updating of working me...

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...a number of detailed models of lexical access (e.g., Caramazza, 1997; Dell, 1986; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Though the models differ in important ways, there is general consensus that the processes involved in producing a single word can be roughly parsed into prelinguistic processes leading to the selection of a concept to be expressed, lexical retrieval processes leading to the retrieval of the syntactic and morphophonological properties of the word, and postlexical articulatory planning and self-monitoring processes (e.g., Bock, 1982; Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997; Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al., 1999; Rapp & Goldrick, 2000). Correspondence should be addressed to Zeshu Shao, P.O. Box 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: Zeshu. Shao@mpi.nl # 2012 The Experimental Psychology Society 1927 http://www.psypress.com/qjep http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.670252 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2012, 65 (10), 1927–1944 D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Speakers rarely emit random words at random times but instead typically use language in order to attain certain goals, be it to comm...

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... actions, although there are differences in the way and extent these abilities are involved. Keywords: Object naming; Action naming; Individual differences; Executive control; Updating; Inhibition. Akey component of the language production system is lexical access, the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon. Without lexical access, speaking is not possible. It is therefore not surprising that considerable research effort has been directed at understanding this process. This work has led to the development of a number of detailed models of lexical access (e.g., Caramazza, 1997; Dell, 1986; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Though the models differ in important ways, there is general consensus that the processes involved in producing a single word can be roughly parsed into prelinguistic processes leading to the selection of a concept to be expressed, lexical retrieval processes leading to the retrieval of the syntactic and morphophonological properties of the word, and postlexical articulatory planning and self-monitoring processes (e.g., Bock, 1982; Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997; Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al., 1999; Rapp & Goldrick, 2000). Correspondence should be addressed to Zeshu Shao, P.O...

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... D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Speakers rarely emit random words at random times but instead typically use language in order to attain certain goals, be it to communicate to others or to structure their own thoughts. Therefore, lexical access, like any other goaldirected activity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Me...

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...d bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Speakers rarely emit random words at random times but instead typically use language in order to attain certain goals, be it to communicate to others or to structure their own thoughts. Therefore, lexical access, like any other goaldirected activity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Meulen, 2012). All of this r...

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...ts could also be related to differences in speech production. Executive control processes have been conceptualized in slightly different ways (e.g., Baddeley, 1986; Miller & Cohen, 2001; Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). In general, executive control refers to the regulatory processes that ensure that our perceptions, thoughts, and actions are in accordance with our goals. It is often assumed that executive control consists of several component processes. An influential decomposition of executive control has been proposed by Miyake and colleagues (e.g., Friedman et al., 2006; Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, & Wager, 2000). They distinguish three types of executive control abilities: (a) monitoring and updating of working memory representations, henceforth “updating”, (b) inhibiting of dominant responses, henceforth “inhibiting”, and (c) shifting of tasks or mental sets, henceforth “shifting”. Though the framework ofMiyake and colleagues (e.g., Friedman et al., 2006;Miyake et al., 2000) was developed to account for individual differences in performing complex tasks such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test or the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, it can be applied to the task of picture naming. As pointed out above, in nam...

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... goal was to investigate whether the participants’ average speed in the object and action-naming task correlatedwith their score on the operation span test. Method Participants The participants were 28 undergraduate students (4 men, Mage= 19.1 years, age range: 18 to 22 years) of the University of Birmingham (UK), who participated in the experiment in exchange for course credits. All participants were native English speakers and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Speeded naming tasks Materials. For the speeded object-naming tasks, 52 black-and-white line-drawings were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) corpus. For the speeded action-naming task, 61 line drawings of actions were selected from the corpus provided by Druks and Masterson (2000). Items were selected to cover a broad range of name frequencies. Object and action picture names were matched for word frequency, using the CELEX database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Van Rijn, 1993) (mean word form frequencies/million: Mobject= 7.09, SD= 7.24, Maction= 9.28, SD= 20.38), F(1, 111)= 0.54, p= .47. The picture names are listed in Appendix A. All pictures were scaled to fit into frames of 2.65 by 2.65 cm on the participant’s screen (1.51° of visu...

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...ching tasks described below. Moreover, we examined the correlations of measures of executive control not only with the participants’ mean RTs in the naming tasks, but also with parameters characterizing their RT distributions. We did not perform these analyses for Experiment 1 because the number of trials was too small. In order to characterize each participant’s RT distribution, we performed ex-Gaussian analyses. The ex-Gaussian function consists of a convolution of a Gaussian (i.e., normal) and an exponential distribution and generally provides good fits to empirical RT distributions (e.g., Luce, 1986; Ratcliff, 1979). The analyses provide three parameters characterizing a distribution, called μ, σ, and τ. The parameters μ and σ reflect the mean and standard deviation of the Gaussian portion, respectively, and τ reflects the mean and standard deviation of the exponential portion. The mean of the whole distribution equals the sum of μ and τ. Thus, ex-Gaussian analyses decompose mean RTs into two additive components, which characterize the leading edge (μ) and the tail (τ) of the underlying RT distribution. In examining individual differences in the magnitude of the three ex-Gaussian paramet...

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...ticipants had participated in Experiment 1. Speeded naming tasks Materials and procedure. The same tasks, object and action naming, were used as those in Experiment 1. However, we used larger sets of stimuli— namely, 162 line drawings of objects and 100 line drawings of actions adapted from Druks and Masterson (2000). The picture names are listed in Appendix A. The object and action pictures were matched for visual complexity, imageability, familiarity, age of acquisition, and word frequency, using norms provided by Druks and Masterson (see Appendix B). Word frequencies were obtained from the Francis and Kucera (1982) count. The other values were derived by rating studies, using seven-point scales. Visual complexity refers to the visual complexity of the drawings. Imageability indicates how easily participants could form a mental image of the object or action event when given its name. Familiarity indicates how familiar the object or action names were. Finally, age of acquisition indicates the subjective estimate of the age (in years) at which the names was learned. As in Experiment 1, the participants first named the object pictures and then, after a short break, the action pictures. Ex-Gaussian analyses....

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...he present article, we report two experiments that examined whether indicators of executive control ability correlated with performance speed in picture-naming tasks. In both experiments, the participants named two sets of pictures, showing objects and actions, respectively. Executive control processes should be engaged in both action and object naming, but they might play a more prominent role in action naming. Action naming can be considered to be more demanding than object naming, not only because verbs are semantically and grammatically more complex than nouns (e.g., Clark & Gerrig, 1983; Gentner, 1982; Saffran, Schwartz, & Marin, 1980), but also because the visual and conceptual processes preceding lexical selection are likely to be more complex (e.g., Szekely et al., 2005). In order to find an appropriate verb the speakers must often identify (but not name) the agent and objects in the picture and the relationship between them, or they must attend to subtle visual cues (e.g., speed lines representing movement). Thus, action naming might be more taxing THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) 1929 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NAMING SPEED D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud...

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... name the pictures before they disappeared from view. The object and action pictures were shown in separate test blocks. All participants carried out the object-naming task first. Each test block began with four practice trials. The order of the experimental items was random and different for 1930 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) SHAO, ROELOFS, MEYER D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 each participant. The participants were tested individually. Operation span task The operation span task, adapted from Turner and Engle (1989), is thought to assess working memory capacity, which specifically reflects the updating ability (Miyake et al., 2000). Participants are required to evaluate the correctness of simple mathematical operations while remembering unrelated words for later serial recall. Materials. For the task, 60 maths operations and English words were used. The operations and words were taken from Tokowicz, Michael, and Kroll (2004; Turner & Engle, 1989). Procedure. The same procedure was used as that in Turner and Engle (1989). On each trial, a fixation cross was presented for 800 ms. After a blank interval of ...

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...an stop-signal delay across all trials from the mean RT on go trials. Short SSRTs indicate that participants can stop their responses relatively late during response preparation and are indicative of good inhibitory control. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) 1933 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NAMING SPEED D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Shape–colour switching task Materials and procedure. This task is thought to assess shifting ability, which means the ability to shift between two tasks or mental units (Meiran, 1996; Miyake, Emerson, Padilla, & Ahn, 2004). The stimuli were four coloured geometric figures: a red and a green square (1.3 by 1.3 cm) and a red and a green circle (1.3 cm in diameter). On each trial, one figure was presented, and, depending on its position on the screen, the participants had to categorize it either with respect to its colour (pressing the “ ↓ ” button for red and the “ ↑ ” button for green), or with respect to its shape (pressing the “ ↓ ” button for circle and the “ ↑ ” button for the square). There were six blocks (i.e., two colour blocks, two shape blocks, and two mixed bloc...

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...urther research is needed to determine exactly how and when updating ability affects the performance in naming tasks. Contribution of inhibiting ability In Experiment 2, we found that the object- and action-naming RTs also correlated significantly with inhibiting ability. Updating and inhibiting ability did not correlate with each other, in line with evidence of Miyake et al. (2000) that these two abilities constitute fairly independent components of executive control. When a picture is viewed, several response alternatives may become activated to different degrees (e.g., Levelt et al., 1999; Roelofs, 1992, 1997). For example, a picture of a cat may activate not only the response cat, but also responses like feline, animal, tail, dog, and so forth. Likewise, a picture of a man kicking a ball may activate not only the response kick, but also responses like man, ball, foot, shoot, goal, and so forth. Inhibiting ability may be engaged when these incorrect responses come to mind and have to be suppressed. The ex-Gaussian analyses indicated that the inhibiting ability was reflected in the leading edge of the RT distribution of action naming, but in 1938 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLO...

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...ng speed and indicators of executive control ability might be more readily seen for actions than for objects. In the first experiment, we only assessed the participants’ updating ability, which seems most obviously relevant in the naming task. This ability is typically assessed in complex span tasks (e.g., reading span, operation span), which require participants to store and regularly update memory representation while carrying out another complex cognitive task. There are various types of complex span tasks, differing in the combinations of tasks, timing, and instructions (for a review, see Conway et al., 2005). We opted for the operation span task, which requires participants to solve simple mathematical problems while memorizing word lists of varying length. Performance on this task has been shown to correlate well with performance in complex cognitive tasks such as reading comprehension and tests of fluid intelligence (e.g., Unsworth & Engle, 2005, 2006). Miyake et al. (2000) provided evidence that the operation span task assesses the updating ability but not the shifting and inhibiting abilities. The question we addressed here was whether operation span scores would also be correlated with perfo...

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...described below. Moreover, we examined the correlations of measures of executive control not only with the participants’ mean RTs in the naming tasks, but also with parameters characterizing their RT distributions. We did not perform these analyses for Experiment 1 because the number of trials was too small. In order to characterize each participant’s RT distribution, we performed ex-Gaussian analyses. The ex-Gaussian function consists of a convolution of a Gaussian (i.e., normal) and an exponential distribution and generally provides good fits to empirical RT distributions (e.g., Luce, 1986; Ratcliff, 1979). The analyses provide three parameters characterizing a distribution, called μ, σ, and τ. The parameters μ and σ reflect the mean and standard deviation of the Gaussian portion, respectively, and τ reflects the mean and standard deviation of the exponential portion. The mean of the whole distribution equals the sum of μ and τ. Thus, ex-Gaussian analyses decompose mean RTs into two additive components, which characterize the leading edge (μ) and the tail (τ) of the underlying RT distribution. In examining individual differences in the magnitude of the three ex-Gaussian parameters, Schmiedek, O...

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...e speed of naming objects and actions, although there are differences in the way and extent these abilities are involved. Keywords: Object naming; Action naming; Individual differences; Executive control; Updating; Inhibition. Akey component of the language production system is lexical access, the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon. Without lexical access, speaking is not possible. It is therefore not surprising that considerable research effort has been directed at understanding this process. This work has led to the development of a number of detailed models of lexical access (e.g., Caramazza, 1997; Dell, 1986; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Though the models differ in important ways, there is general consensus that the processes involved in producing a single word can be roughly parsed into prelinguistic processes leading to the selection of a concept to be expressed, lexical retrieval processes leading to the retrieval of the syntactic and morphophonological properties of the word, and postlexical articulatory planning and self-monitoring processes (e.g., Bock, 1982; Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997; Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al., 1999; Rapp & Goldrick, 2000). Correspon...

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...process. This work has led to the development of a number of detailed models of lexical access (e.g., Caramazza, 1997; Dell, 1986; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Though the models differ in important ways, there is general consensus that the processes involved in producing a single word can be roughly parsed into prelinguistic processes leading to the selection of a concept to be expressed, lexical retrieval processes leading to the retrieval of the syntactic and morphophonological properties of the word, and postlexical articulatory planning and self-monitoring processes (e.g., Bock, 1982; Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997; Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al., 1999; Rapp & Goldrick, 2000). Correspondence should be addressed to Zeshu Shao, P.O. Box 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: Zeshu. Shao@mpi.nl # 2012 The Experimental Psychology Society 1927 http://www.psypress.com/qjep http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.670252 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2012, 65 (10), 1927–1944 D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Speakers rarely emit random words at random times but instead typically use language in order to attain certain goals,...

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... 2012 The Experimental Psychology Society 1927 http://www.psypress.com/qjep http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.670252 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2012, 65 (10), 1927–1944 D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Speakers rarely emit random words at random times but instead typically use language in order to attain certain goals, be it to communicate to others or to structure their own thoughts. Therefore, lexical access, like any other goaldirected activity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness an...

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...a group of healthy adults could also be related to differences in speech production. Executive control processes have been conceptualized in slightly different ways (e.g., Baddeley, 1986; Miller & Cohen, 2001; Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). In general, executive control refers to the regulatory processes that ensure that our perceptions, thoughts, and actions are in accordance with our goals. It is often assumed that executive control consists of several component processes. An influential decomposition of executive control has been proposed by Miyake and colleagues (e.g., Friedman et al., 2006; Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, & Wager, 2000). They distinguish three types of executive control abilities: (a) monitoring and updating of working memory representations, henceforth “updating”, (b) inhibiting of dominant responses, henceforth “inhibiting”, and (c) shifting of tasks or mental sets, henceforth “shifting”. Though the framework ofMiyake and colleagues (e.g., Friedman et al., 2006;Miyake et al., 2000) was developed to account for individual differences in performing complex tasks such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test or the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, it can be applied...

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...orrelated more strongly with the performance in the action- than in the object-naming task would fit in with the suggestion that updating ability affects the efficiency of conceptual processing. Updating might also affect the efficiency of specific types of monitoring processes. For instance, in the present experiments, speakers with good updating ability might be more likely than speakers with poorer updating ability to keep in mind the requirement to respond within 600 ms and to schedule their conceptual and linguistic planning processes and set their response criteria accordingly (see also Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997; Meyer, Roelofs, & Levelt, 2003). This would have been more difficult for action than object naming, which would explain why updating ability appeared to have a somewhat stronger effect on action than object naming. Obviously further research is needed to determine exactly how and when updating ability affects the performance in naming tasks. Contribution of inhibiting ability In Experiment 2, we found that the object- and action-naming RTs also correlated significantly with inhibiting ability. Updating and inhibiting ability did not correlate with each other, in line with evidence of Miyake ...

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...quency, t(160)= 1.74, p= .08 for the object-naming task, and t(98)= 1.01, p= .29 for the action-naming task; and for concept familiarity, t(160)= 0.91, p= .36 for the object-naming task, and t(98)= 1.27, p= .21 for the action-naming task. Based on the post hoc analysis, there is no clear evidence that slow responses were systematically associated with specific items. In a follow-up experiment in Dutch described above, we asked speakers to name the same objects and actions as those in Experiment 2, and we assessed their vocabulary using the Dutch version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn & Dunn, 2004). There was no significant correlation between the participants’ τ parameters in the naming tasks and their vocabulary knowledge. This argues against the view that the correlations seen in Experiment 2 between the τ parameters and updating ability were mediated by differences in vocabulary. Thus, we propose that updating ability may affect naming performance by determining how well a speaker stays “on task”. Further research is required to find out more about what it means “to stay on task”. It is, for instance, possible that there are specific components in the naming process that rely partic...

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...span test. Method Participants The participants were 28 undergraduate students (4 men, Mage= 19.1 years, age range: 18 to 22 years) of the University of Birmingham (UK), who participated in the experiment in exchange for course credits. All participants were native English speakers and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Speeded naming tasks Materials. For the speeded object-naming tasks, 52 black-and-white line-drawings were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) corpus. For the speeded action-naming task, 61 line drawings of actions were selected from the corpus provided by Druks and Masterson (2000). Items were selected to cover a broad range of name frequencies. Object and action picture names were matched for word frequency, using the CELEX database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Van Rijn, 1993) (mean word form frequencies/million: Mobject= 7.09, SD= 7.24, Maction= 9.28, SD= 20.38), F(1, 111)= 0.54, p= .47. The picture names are listed in Appendix A. All pictures were scaled to fit into frames of 2.65 by 2.65 cm on the participant’s screen (1.51° of visual angle). Procedure. On each trial, a fixation cross (+) was presented first for 800 ms in the centre of the screen, followed by a picture, ...

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... require participants to store and regularly update memory representation while carrying out another complex cognitive task. There are various types of complex span tasks, differing in the combinations of tasks, timing, and instructions (for a review, see Conway et al., 2005). We opted for the operation span task, which requires participants to solve simple mathematical problems while memorizing word lists of varying length. Performance on this task has been shown to correlate well with performance in complex cognitive tasks such as reading comprehension and tests of fluid intelligence (e.g., Unsworth & Engle, 2005, 2006). Miyake et al. (2000) provided evidence that the operation span task assesses the updating ability but not the shifting and inhibiting abilities. The question we addressed here was whether operation span scores would also be correlated with performance in simple naming tasks. In the second experiment, we additionally assessed the participants’ inhibiting and shifting abilities using stop-signal and shape–colour switching tasks, respectively. Details about these latter tasks will be given below. In both experiments, we expected that picture-naming speed would correlate with measures of ...

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...cle, we report two experiments that examined whether indicators of executive control ability correlated with performance speed in picture-naming tasks. In both experiments, the participants named two sets of pictures, showing objects and actions, respectively. Executive control processes should be engaged in both action and object naming, but they might play a more prominent role in action naming. Action naming can be considered to be more demanding than object naming, not only because verbs are semantically and grammatically more complex than nouns (e.g., Clark & Gerrig, 1983; Gentner, 1982; Saffran, Schwartz, & Marin, 1980), but also because the visual and conceptual processes preceding lexical selection are likely to be more complex (e.g., Szekely et al., 2005). In order to find an appropriate verb the speakers must often identify (but not name) the agent and objects in the picture and the relationship between them, or they must attend to subtle visual cues (e.g., speed lines representing movement). Thus, action naming might be more taxing THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) 1929 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NAMING SPEED D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] a...

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... the updating ability in picture naming. We estimated the parameters μ, σ, and τ for the object- and action-naming RT distributions for each participant and computed the correlations of these parameters with the participants’ operation span scores. We found a significant negative correlation between the operation span score and τ for both object and action naming, r= –.45, p, .05, r= –.62, p, .01, respectively. There were no correlations between operation span score and the parameters μ and σ. The negative correlation between operation span score and τ is in line with the evidence obtained by Schmiedek et al. (2007) and Tse et al. (2010) that τ, as opposed to μ and σ, is uniquely related to working memory measures. The stop-signal RT was significantly correlated with the mean RTs for object and action naming. This indicates the involvement of inhibitory control in both object and action naming. Moreover, the ex-Gaussian analyses showed a positive correlation of the stop-signal RT with τ for object naming, r= .71, p, .01, and a positive correlation with μ for action naming, r= .58, p, .05. Thus, the inhibiting ability is reflected in the leading edge of the RT distribution of action naming. Individual dif...

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...DIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NAMING SPEED D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 given the present evidence that individual differences in executive control abilities contribute to naming RTs even in simple tasks, it is plausible to assume that these differences play an even larger role in picture–word interference performance. This may explain differences in results between studies. For example, a number of studies have reported distractor word effects in picture naming when participants simultaneously perform another unrelated task (e.g., Janssen, Schirm, Mahon, & Caramazza, 2008). However, several other studies could not replicate the semantic interference effect under divided attention (e.g., Mädebach, Oppermann, Hantsch, Curda, & Jescheniak, 2011; Piai, Roelofs, & Schriefers, 2011). Piai et al. (2011) argued that the difference in results between studies may be related to difference in executive control parameters between the participant groups, and they presented the results of computer simulations demonstrating the utility of this account. Taken together, the present findings and recent findings in the literature (e.g., Piai et al., 2011) suggest that the involve...

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...en the offset of the fixation cross and the onset of the tone (the stop-signal delay) was initially set to 250 ms. When the participant successfully inhibited the response on a given stop trial, the delay in the following stop trial was increased by 50 ms, making the task slightly harder; when the participant failed to inhibit the response on a given stop trial, the delay was decreased by 50 ms, making the task slightly easier. Apparatus. The same equipment was used as that in the preceding experiment. The tone was presented using Beyerdynamic DTX 700 Trendline headphones. Analysis. Following Verbruggen et al. (2008), each participant’s stop-signal RT (SSRT) was estimated by subtracting the mean stop-signal delay across all trials from the mean RT on go trials. Short SSRTs indicate that participants can stop their responses relatively late during response preparation and are indicative of good inhibitory control. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) 1933 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NAMING SPEED D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Shape–colour switching task Materials and procedure. This task is thought to assess shifting...

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...ivity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Meulen, 2012). All of this requires the involvement of executive control. This holds even when speakers produce single words in response to line drawings, as is often the case in experimental studies of lexical access. Here the speakers must consistently attend to the stimuli, remember the precise instructions concerning the content...

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...ies contribute to naming RTs even in simple tasks, it is plausible to assume that these differences play an even larger role in picture–word interference performance. This may explain differences in results between studies. For example, a number of studies have reported distractor word effects in picture naming when participants simultaneously perform another unrelated task (e.g., Janssen, Schirm, Mahon, & Caramazza, 2008). However, several other studies could not replicate the semantic interference effect under divided attention (e.g., Mädebach, Oppermann, Hantsch, Curda, & Jescheniak, 2011; Piai, Roelofs, & Schriefers, 2011). Piai et al. (2011) argued that the difference in results between studies may be related to difference in executive control parameters between the participant groups, and they presented the results of computer simulations demonstrating the utility of this account. Taken together, the present findings and recent findings in the literature (e.g., Piai et al., 2011) suggest that the involvement of executive control in naming performance not only is of interest in its own right, but may also resolve discrepancies between studies. Still, one might ask whether the influences discovered here—of upd...

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...ing their output. In the present article, we report two experiments that examined whether indicators of executive control ability correlated with performance speed in picture-naming tasks. In both experiments, the participants named two sets of pictures, showing objects and actions, respectively. Executive control processes should be engaged in both action and object naming, but they might play a more prominent role in action naming. Action naming can be considered to be more demanding than object naming, not only because verbs are semantically and grammatically more complex than nouns (e.g., Clark & Gerrig, 1983; Gentner, 1982; Saffran, Schwartz, & Marin, 1980), but also because the visual and conceptual processes preceding lexical selection are likely to be more complex (e.g., Szekely et al., 2005). In order to find an appropriate verb the speakers must often identify (but not name) the agent and objects in the picture and the relationship between them, or they must attend to subtle visual cues (e.g., speed lines representing movement). Thus, action naming might be more taxing THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) 1929 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NAMING SPEED D ow nl oa de d ...

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...s. Imageability indicates how easily participants could form a mental image of the object or action event when given its name. Familiarity indicates how familiar the object or action names were. Finally, age of acquisition indicates the subjective estimate of the age (in years) at which the names was learned. As in Experiment 1, the participants first named the object pictures and then, after a short break, the action pictures. Ex-Gaussian analyses. The ex-Gaussian parameters μ, σ, and τ were estimated from the naming RT data using the quantile maximum likelihood estimation method proposed by Brown and Heathcote (2003). The parameters were estimated separately for object and action naming and for each participant individually using the QMPE software with 10 quantiles (Brown & Heathcote, 2003). Operation span task The task was administered in the same way as in Experiment 1. The results of the operation span task were analysed as in the preceding experiment. Stop-signal task Materials and procedure. The stop-signal task assesses the ability to inhibit a response. In selecting the stimuli and designing the trials, we followed Verbruggen, Logan, and Stevens (2008). There were visual and auditory stimuli. The v...

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...d determined whether there was a relationship between their performance in the naming tasks and the indicators of executive control ability. Several strands of research have linked executive control ability to differences in word production and other language tasks. For instance, evidence suggests that deficits in executive control contribute to the impaired language performance of individuals with specific language impairment (SLI), which is a disorder of the acquisition and use of language in children who otherwise appear to be normally developing and which may persist into adulthood (e.g., Im-Bolter, Johnson, & Pascual-Leone, 2006; 1928 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) SHAO, ROELOFS, MEYER D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Montgomery, Magimairaj, & Finney, 2010). The deficits include working memory capacity and inhibiting ability. Moreover, evidence suggests that brain-damaged patients with deficient inhibiting abilities have difficulty producing words under conditions of high lexical competition in a word generation task (e.g., Badre, Poldrack, Paré-Blagoev, Insler, & Wagner, 2005; Thompson-Schill et al., 1998). Studies of AD...

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...eriment 2 between the τ parameters and updating ability were mediated by differences in vocabulary. Thus, we propose that updating ability may affect naming performance by determining how well a speaker stays “on task”. Further research is required to find out more about what it means “to stay on task”. It is, for instance, possible that there are specific components in the naming process that rely particularly strongly on updating ability. For instance, it has often been proposed that conceptual planning processes and self-monitoring processes require processing capacity (e.g., Levelt, 1989; Oomen & Postma, 2002), whereas lexical access, though not an automatic process (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a), might be lower in capacity demands. Updating ability might specifically affect the efficiency of the conceptual processes, but not so much the lexical retrieval processes. In our materials, the action and object set were well matched for lexical characteristics, but action naming probably was more demanding in terms of the conceptualization processes. The finding that updating ability was correlated more strongly with the performance in the action- than in the object-...

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... of spoken word production (Levelt et al., 1999; Roelofs, 2003, 2008c), information about words is stored in a large associative network, which is accessed by spreading activation. Executive control is achieved by condition–action rules that determine what is done with the activated lexical information depending on the goal and task demands in working memory. Much of the work on executive control in language production has taken a classic experimental approach—for instance, examining the effect of different types of distractors on picture naming (e. g., Roelofs, 2008b, for a review). However, Bower (1975) has pointed out that theories about the involvement of specific processing components in cognitive tasks should be tested not only experimentally, but also by examining the predictions they make about individual differences. If a cognitive component, A, plays a nontrivial role in determining the performance in Task B, individuals differing in the ability underlying A should differ in their performance in Task B. Thus, if executive control plays a substantial role in efficient lexical access, then people differing in executive control abilities should differ in their performance in typical lex...

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...e that individual differences in executive control abilities contribute to naming RTs even in simple tasks, it is plausible to assume that these differences play an even larger role in picture–word interference performance. This may explain differences in results between studies. For example, a number of studies have reported distractor word effects in picture naming when participants simultaneously perform another unrelated task (e.g., Janssen, Schirm, Mahon, & Caramazza, 2008). However, several other studies could not replicate the semantic interference effect under divided attention (e.g., Mädebach, Oppermann, Hantsch, Curda, & Jescheniak, 2011; Piai, Roelofs, & Schriefers, 2011). Piai et al. (2011) argued that the difference in results between studies may be related to difference in executive control parameters between the participant groups, and they presented the results of computer simulations demonstrating the utility of this account. Taken together, the present findings and recent findings in the literature (e.g., Piai et al., 2011) suggest that the involvement of executive control in naming performance not only is of interest in its own right, but may also resolve discrepancies between studies. Still, one might ask whether th...

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...ain certain goals, be it to communicate to others or to structure their own thoughts. Therefore, lexical access, like any other goaldirected activity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Meulen, 2012). All of this requires the involvement of executive control. This holds even when speakers produce single words in response to line drawings, as is often the case in experimental s...

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...production and other language tasks. For instance, evidence suggests that deficits in executive control contribute to the impaired language performance of individuals with specific language impairment (SLI), which is a disorder of the acquisition and use of language in children who otherwise appear to be normally developing and which may persist into adulthood (e.g., Im-Bolter, Johnson, & Pascual-Leone, 2006; 1928 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (10) SHAO, ROELOFS, MEYER D ow nl oa de d by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Montgomery, Magimairaj, & Finney, 2010). The deficits include working memory capacity and inhibiting ability. Moreover, evidence suggests that brain-damaged patients with deficient inhibiting abilities have difficulty producing words under conditions of high lexical competition in a word generation task (e.g., Badre, Poldrack, Paré-Blagoev, Insler, & Wagner, 2005; Thompson-Schill et al., 1998). Studies of ADHD have indicated that deficient inhibiting abilities caused disfluencies during sentence production (e.g., Engelhardt, Corley, Nigg, & Ferreira, 2010). In the ageing literature, age-related declining inhibiting abilities have ...

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...anguage in order to attain certain goals, be it to communicate to others or to structure their own thoughts. Therefore, lexical access, like any other goaldirected activity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Meulen, 2012). All of this requires the involvement of executive control. This holds even when speakers produce single words in response to line drawings, as is often the case...

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...ivity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Meulen, 2012). All of this requires the involvement of executive control. This holds even when speakers produce single words in response to line drawings, as is often the case in experimental studies of lexical access. Here the speakers must consistently attend to the stimuli, remember the precise instructions concerning the content...

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...ivity, must be governed by executive control processes (e.g., Roelofs, 2003). These are general cognitive processes that define and maintain the individual’s goals, recruit appropriate perceptual and response mechanisms, and monitor their performance (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986; Posner & Petersen, 1990). When we speak, we need to choose our words wisely (e.g., considering our goals and the common ground between interlocutors; Nilsen & Graham, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2009), allocate sufficient processing capacity to our speech planning processes (e.g., Cook & Meyer, 2008; Ferreira & Pashler, 2002; Roelofs, 2008a, 2008b), and monitor our speech output for appropriateness and correctness. We also need to choose and maintain an appropriate speech rate and register (e.g., child-directed speech or the formal style required for a sermon, see Meyer, Konopka, Wheeldon, & van der Meulen, 2012). All of this requires the involvement of executive control. This holds even when speakers produce single words in response to line drawings, as is often the case in experimental studies of lexical access. Here the speakers must consistently attend to the stimuli, remember the precise instructions concerning the content...

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...ture naming. We estimated the parameters μ, σ, and τ for the object- and action-naming RT distributions for each participant and computed the correlations of these parameters with the participants’ operation span scores. We found a significant negative correlation between the operation span score and τ for both object and action naming, r= –.45, p, .05, r= –.62, p, .01, respectively. There were no correlations between operation span score and the parameters μ and σ. The negative correlation between operation span score and τ is in line with the evidence obtained by Schmiedek et al. (2007) and Tse et al. (2010) that τ, as opposed to μ and σ, is uniquely related to working memory measures. The stop-signal RT was significantly correlated with the mean RTs for object and action naming. This indicates the involvement of inhibitory control in both object and action naming. Moreover, the ex-Gaussian analyses showed a positive correlation of the stop-signal RT with τ for object naming, r= .71, p, .01, and a positive correlation with μ for action naming, r= .58, p, .05. Thus, the inhibiting ability is reflected in the leading edge of the RT distribution of action naming. Individual differences in the leadin...

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...to record their manual responses in the operation span test. The tests were controlled by E-Prime 2 software. Results The data from four participants were excluded from further analyses because the number of correct maths responses in the operation span task was lower than the minimum acceptable rate (85%) suggested by Turner and Engle (1989). This rate was used to avoid trading off between solving maths operations and memorizing words. The average score for the remaining participants was 36.14 (SD= 7.08), which is higher than the ranges reported in other studies but well below ceiling (e.g., Arnell, Stokes, & Maclean, 2010, M= 35.57; SD= 9.68; Unsworth & Engle, 2005, M= 13.25; SD= 6.58). The remaining participants’ responses in the naming tasks were coded for speed and accuracy. Nine items of the object-naming task and seven items of the action-naming task were excluded because the rate of correct responses was below 60%. The error rates and the mean naming response times (RTs) for correct responses to the remaining items are shown in Table 1. As expected, participants were faster to name object than action pictures. This difference was significant in analyses using participants (t1) and items (t2) as random va...

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... form (e.g., to produce bare nouns or determiner noun phrases, in their first or second language), and any specific instructions concerning the speed or accuracy of the responses (e.g., to be quick but also accurate, to initiate or complete the response within a specific time interval or to articulate very carefully), and monitor their performance. An important topic in current language production research is how the core processes of lexical access, captured in the models mentioned above, and executive control processes jointly determine performance in linguistic tasks (e.g., Roelofs, 2008b; Roelofs & Piai, 2011). For example, in the WEAVER++ model of spoken word production (Levelt et al., 1999; Roelofs, 2003, 2008c), information about words is stored in a large associative network, which is accessed by spreading activation. Executive control is achieved by condition–action rules that determine what is done with the activated lexical information depending on the goal and task demands in working memory. Much of the work on executive control in language production has taken a classic experimental approach—for instance, examining the effect of different types of distractors on picture naming (e. g., Roel...

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...f τ with updating ability is in line with research by Schmiedek et al. (2007) and Tse et al. (2010), who showed that τ was the strongest unique predictor of working memory capacity, which was linked to the updating ability by Miyake et al. (2000). Schmiedek et al. and Tse et al. used different ways of assessing updating ability and different tasks (e.g., involving manual responding). The convergence of results from studies using different tasks is important as it demonstrates the robustness of the relationship of updating ability and the incidence of slow responses in cognitive tasks. Whereas Unsworth et al. (2010) argued for a relation between τ and lapses of attention, Schmiedek et al. (2007) hypothesized that the link between τ and working memory exists because the efficiency of information transmission in many tasks depends on how well arbitrary stimulus–response mappings are maintained. According to Schmiedek et al. (2007), many tasks involve arbitrary mappings between stimuli and responses. For example, in their own study, participants had to classify stimuli (e.g., words as plant or animal, digits as odd or even, arrows as upward or downward pointing) by pressing a left or right key. Bindings bet...

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...by [ R ad bo ud U ni ve rs ite it N ijm eg en ] at 0 5: 37 1 2 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Montgomery, Magimairaj, & Finney, 2010). The deficits include working memory capacity and inhibiting ability. Moreover, evidence suggests that brain-damaged patients with deficient inhibiting abilities have difficulty producing words under conditions of high lexical competition in a word generation task (e.g., Badre, Poldrack, Paré-Blagoev, Insler, & Wagner, 2005; Thompson-Schill et al., 1998). Studies of ADHD have indicated that deficient inhibiting abilities caused disfluencies during sentence production (e.g., Engelhardt, Corley, Nigg, & Ferreira, 2010). In the ageing literature, age-related declining inhibiting abilities have been associated with increased lexical competition effects in both spoken word recognition and production (e.g., Taler, Aaron, Steinmetz, & Pisoni, 2010). Finally, in studies of bilingualism, fluent bilinguals performed better in a letter fluency task than monolinguals, which was attributed to enhanced executive control abilities in bilinguals compared with monolinguals (e.g., Festman, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Münte, 2010; Luo, Luk, & Bialystok, 2010). Based on these findings, one might expect that variations in executiv...

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...t action naming can be considered to be more demanding than object naming, not only because verbs are semantically and grammatically more complex than nouns, but also because the visual and conceptual processes preceding lexical selection are likely to be more complex. This might be the reason why the inhibiting ability was more regularly needed in action than object naming, which is reflected in the correlations between τ of object naming and μ of action naming. As for updating, more research is required to determine exactly how inhibiting ability is involved in naming. In a companion study (Shao et al., 2012), we observed that inhibiting ability predicted the participants’ average RTs in a picture–word interference task, but not the size of the semantic interference effect (see also below). This demonstrates that inhibition, as measured by the stop-signal task, is nonselective, rather than being specifically involved in suppressing responses that are closely related to the target response. Contribution of the shifting ability Finally, differences in the third component of executive control, the shifting ability, were not related to differences in mean naming RTs. However, the ex-Gaussian analyses ...