Neighbourhood density and frequency effects in speech production: A case for interactivity

In three experiments, we explore the effects of phonological properties such as neighbourhood density and frequency on speech production in Spanish. Specifically, we assess the reliability of the recent observation made by Vitevitch and Stamer (2006), according to which the neighbourhood effect in Spanish has a reverse polarity to that observed in other languages. In Experiment 1, we replicate Vitevitch and Stamer's (2006) experiment, this time adding a control group. The same inhibitory neighbourhood effect found for both groups can not corroborate the hypothesis posited by Vitevitch and Stamer. In Experiment 2, our results show that native speakers of Spanish named pictures with words belonging to high density neighbourhoods faster than those belonging to low density neighbourhoods. In Experiment 3, we test for effects of neighbourhood frequency during lexical selection. Again, we find a facilitatory effect for words with a high-frequency neighbourhood. Together, the results of the present experiments suggest that lexical selection is facilitated by the number of neighbours and by neighbourhoods with higher frequency. These findings are consistent with the predictions of interactive models.