In a recent study, Kurtz et al. (2018) reported a series of picture-word interference (PWI) experiments showing that picture naming (e.g., "duck") is slowed down by distractor words phonologically related to an alternative name (e.g., distractor "birch" related to alternative name "bird") when compared to unrelated distractor words. This effect indicates that alternative names were (phonologically) co-activated. Critically, the effect was not attenuated across repeated naming. The authors

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... that the stability of the effect challenges adaptive models of word production which assume that co-activated but non-selected words become less accessible for future retrieval due to an incremental learning mechanism. Any such process should have been reflected in decreased interference across repeated naming. Using a similar experimental protocol as Kurtz et al., the present study looked at the stability versus attenuation of different distractor effects in PWI. We found that interference from distractor words phonologically related to an alternative name was stable across repeated naming, replicating the core finding from Kurtz et al. In contrast, interference from distractor words denoting a semantic category coordinate (e.g., "stork") was attenuated across repeated naming. A similar pattern was found for distractor words denoting an alternative name (e.g., "bird"). We discuss implications of these findings with respect to the issue of incremental learning in word production and the use of the PWI task in this context.