Figure 1
Modified version of the model presented in Monsell et al. (2001). What activates the task set for word reading and what does it go on to do? Are S-R associations such as grapheme-to-phoneme processing enough to explain the effects attributed to task conflict? An alternative account of negative facilitation is that strong S-R associations confer privileged access for pronounceable letter strings to their associated phonetic codes meaning that the irrelevant word is obligatorily processed up to the level of phonetic encoding, which delays phonetic encoding of the colour name. The longer the encoding of the irrelevant word takes, the longer the delay. For example, phonetic encoding is slower for low frequency words and thus colour naming is slower for such words compared to high frequency words. If this delay occurred for all pronounceable letter strings, but not for non-pronounceable letter strings, colour naming would be slower for all pronounceable letter strings leading to negative facilitation.