J Psycholinguist Res (2009) 38:527–547 DOI 10.1007/s10936-009-9119-1 The Distractor Picture Paradox in Speech Production: Evidence from the Word Translation Task Eduardo Navarrete · Albert Costa Published online: 29 May 2009 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract Several naming studies show that distractor pictures, even when intentionally ignored by the speaker, are still capable of activating their respective phonological repre- sentations. However results from word translation studies suggest that distractor pictures are only conceptually activated. Here we tested the reliability of the word translation results. In four experiments, bilingual participants translated words from one language to the other one while ignoring the presentation of pictures. In Experiment 1a phonological related pic- tures sped up translation latencies. However, the effect disappeared when the percentage of related trials was reduced (Experiment 1b). In Experiment 2a translation latencies were faster when the words were accompanied by semantically related pictures than by unre- lated pictures. Importantly, the effect was still reliable when the proportion of related trials was reduced and the total number of semantic categories was increased (Experiment 2b). Theoretical implications of the influence of distractor pictures during speech production are discussed. Keywords Speech production · Distractor picture processing · Word translation Eduardo Navarrete was supported by a postdoctoral grant of the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya. This research was supported by two grants from the Spanish government (PSI 2008-01191/PSIC and Consolider Ingenio 2010 CE-CSD2007-00121). E. Navarrete (B ) Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMEC), University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, 38068 Rovereto, Italy e-mail: eduardo.navarrete@unitn.it E. Navarrete Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain A. Costa ICREA (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats) & Departament de Tecnologia, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain 123