Evolution of Semantic Facilitation and Interference in Lexical Retrieval in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease

Speech production requires the activation of semantic representations and the selection of a specific word among semantically related words in a mental lexicon. The semantic context can therefore influence this lexical retrieval. Research has focused on interference processes (Python et al., 2018). However, it remains unclear how the semantic context can also facilitate lexical retrieval. Some studies shown that semantic interference is frequently caused by coordination-taxonomic relation (e.g., cow-horse; picture and word belonging to the same category), while thematic relation (e.g., cow-milk; picture and word sharing a temporality, spatiality, causality, or functionality) facilitate lexical retrieval (Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009). However, it has also been shown that experimental settings, especially for superordination relation (e.g., cow-animal; word as the category of the picture), can switch its effect from interference to facilitation (Python et al., 2018). The first objective of our study is to investigate which semantic link facilitates or interferes with lexical retrieval in a picture word interference task. This study will explore the evolution of these effects with age and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Indeed, it has been showed that AD leads to lexical-semantic difficulties affecting retrieval of words and their meaning. Our protocol will include four experimental conditions relating to the link between a picture to be named and a word written on it: (1) a coordination-taxonomic relation, (2) a superordination relation, (3) a thematic relation and (4) a control condition. We will present the experimental plan of this study as well as the different steps of the methodological construction.