Orthographic/phonological facilitation of naming responses in the pictureword task: An event-related fMRI study using overt vocal responding

In the picture–word interference task, naming re-sponses are facilitated when a distractor word is orthographically and phonologically related to the depicted object as compared to an unrelated word. We used event-related functional magnetic reso-nance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the cerebral he-modynamic responses associated with this priming effect. Serial (or independent-stage) and interactive models of word production that explicitly account for picture–word interference effects assume that the locus of the effect is at the level of retrieving phonological codes, a role attributed recently to the left posterior superior temporal cortex (Wernicke’s area). This assumption was tested by randomly pre-senting participants with trials from orthographi