Abstract: The time course of semantic, orthographic and phonologic activation in Chinese speech production was explored with picture-word interference paradigm. The semantic inhibition effect was found ranging from the SOAs of -300 ms to 0 ms. The orthographic facilitation effect occurred from SOAs of -100 ms to 100 ms. The phonological facilitation effect appeared at SOAs of 100 ms. The results of the experiments were consistent with the views of the interactive activation theory. The experiments probed the orthographic activation and phonological activation independently. The important role of orthography and whether the participants used the strategies unconsciously in the Chinese word production was discussed.

Key words: speech production, picture-word interference paradigm, lexical selection, phonological encoding