Dual-tasking in language: Concurrent production and comprehension interfere at the phonological level

Conversation often involves simultaneous production and comprehension, yet little research has investigated whether these two processes interfere with one another. We tested participants’ ability to dual-task with production and comprehension tasks. Task one (production task) was picture naming. Task two (comprehension task) was either syllable identification (linguistic condition) or tone identification (non-linguistic condition). The two identification tasks were matched for difficulty. Three SOAs (50ms, 300ms, and 1800ms) resulted in different amounts of overlap between the production and comprehension tasks. We hypothesized that as production and comprehension use similar resources there would be greater interference with concurrent linguistic than non-linguistic tasks. At the 50ms SOA, picture naming latencies were slower in the linguistic compared to the non-linguistic condition, suggesting that the resources required for production and comprehension overlap more in the linguistic condition. As the syllables were non-words without lexical representations, this interference likely occurs primarily at the phonological level. Across all SOAs, identification RTs were longer in the linguistic condition, showing that such phonological interference percolates through to the comprehension task, regardless of SOA. In sum, these results demonstrate that concurrent access to the phonological level in production and comprehension results in measurable interference in both speaking and comprehending