The influence of cognitive control on lexical access during spoken word production: Evidence from cross-task adaptation

Previous research has established a robust association between cognitive control and spoken word production, yet the theoretical status of cognitive control within models of lexical access remains underspecified. The present study addresses this gap by examining whether domain-general cognitive control mechanisms exert an immediate, trial-by-trial influence on spoken word production. Using a cross-task conflict adaptation paradigm, we combined the Flanker task with the picture-word interference (PWI) task to test whether engagement of cognitive control in a non-linguistic task modulates subsequent lexical processing. The Flanker task manipulated cognitive control demands through congruent and incongruent trials, whereas the PWI task employed semantically related distractors (Experiment 1) or phonologically related distractors (Experiment 2), targeting lemma retrieval and phonological encoding, respectively. Across both experiments, reliable cross-task conflict adaptation effects (CAE) were observed. Canonical semantic interference and phonological facilitation effects were present following congruent Flanker trials but were substantially reduced or eliminated following incongruent Flanker trials, indicating that prior engagement of cognitive control attenuates both competitive and facilitative processes during lexical access. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 with a prolonged inter-task interval (1000 ms), which abolished the cross-task modulation of PWI effects, thereby demonstrating that the influence of cognitive control on spoken word production is temporally constrained. These findings provide compelling evidence that domain-general cognitive control dynamically regulates multiple stages of lexical access, encompassing both lemma-level competition and phonological encoding. These findings extend the lexical competition model and response exclusion hypothesis by considering the domain-general cognitive control mechanism.