hearing loss in the left ear, consistent with noise induced hearing loss prevalent in populations of mill workers (Ertem, Ilçin, & Meriç, 1998). Background Assessment: An extensive battery of background assessments was undertaken to investigate AB’s neuropsychological and linguistic profiles and auditory processing skills. Neuropsychological Testing: The neuropsychological battery investigated verbal and visuo-spatial memory capacity using forward digit and corsi block span respectively. A direct copy of the Rey Complex Figure (Myers & Myers, 1995) assessed perceptual organisation. Abstract reasoning was investigated using the Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1976). Linguistic Testing: The linguistic battery assessed AB’s input, central semantic and output processing multi-modally. The 64-item battery (Bozeat, Lambon Ralph, Patterson, Garrard, & Hodges, 2000) was used to assess single word auditory and written comprehension over the same items. Sentence level auditory and written comprehension was assessed using the Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG: Bishop, 1989). Central semantic processing was investigated using the three picture version of the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test (PPT: Howard & Patterson, 1992). Subtests from the Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing in Aphasia (PALPA: Kay, Coltheart, & Lesser, 1992) assessed single word reading and written picture naming along with single word repetition and spelling to dictation. Oral naming was assessed
semantic condition. The TRACE model contains no semantic information, However, one might assume that a semantic level forms at a later stage in the speech perception process following lexical identification. As the unrelated condition and the semantic condition have the same phonological relationship to the target, the difference between these two conditions, under an interactive view, might be due to feedback from a semantic layer. Energy put into the system by the semantic distractor would spread to related items (including the target) and this activation would feedback through the system. This type of feedback may be weak in a single word task due to the computational distance between perceptual inputs and semantic information. The current results, however, could be equally well accounted for by the autonomous Shortlist model. The lexical bias seen in normal repetition (i.e. producing a large proportion of formal errors in the blank condition) and the large proportion of miscue errors in the phonological conditions could be accounted for by intra-level inhibition at the lexical level and post identification decision making processes which are influenced by lexical knowledge (McQueen, Cutler, & Norris, 2003). Degraded/underspecified input into the lexical system may result in greater influence of intra-level competition and therefore the higher possibility of an incorrect competing lexical item being selected. The presence of a distractor could again provide additional activation at lexical level information for these competitors further enhancing their influence in intra-level competition and the greater degree of phonological overlap, the greater the intra-level competition, accounting for greater number of cued errors with full rhyme rather than part rhyme distractors. Additionally the results could be explained by the use of a post identification decision making process, which may account for the semantic condition producing less errors than the