Semantic relatedness among objects promotes the activation of multiple phonological codes during object naming.

In a picture-word interference experiment the authors demonstrate that a semantic-categorical relation between a to-be-named target picture and a context picture promotes the phonological activation of the to-be-ignored context picture. No such phonological activation is observed if the objects are semantically unrelated. This finding gives further insight into the mechanisms that modulate the activation flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning. In contrast to recent picture-picture interference studies, the results provide direct evidence that the phonological activation of a context object is dependent on its semantic processing.