Incongruency sequence effects reduce taboo interference in picture naming

This research investigated whether sequence effects, or facilitation from two consecutive trials that share incongruency, reduce taboo interference during speech production. Participants named pictures accompanied by distractor words that were congruent with (i.e. identical to) or incongruent with (different from) the name of the picture. Incongruent distractors also varied in emotion (taboo or neutral). Similar to pictures with incongruent-neutral distractors, pictures with incongruent-taboo distractors were named faster when preceded by a trial with an incongruent-neutral distractor relative to a congruent-neutral distractor. These results demonstrate that robust taboo interference can be reduced through adjustments to attentional control. However, naming on incongruent-taboo trials did not differ as a function of whether the preceding incongruent trial's emotion was taboo or neutral, suggesting limitations in attentional mechanisms beyond those employed to control incongruency. Implications of these findings for attentional control accounts of sequence effects are discussed.