Fig. 4.

Activation and decay parameters for the situation leading to advancing for a PW consisting of a function word preceding a content word. The solid lines represent the activation states for the function (left) and content word (right) at the point where the speaker has just finished uttering the function word. The dotted lines indicate the activation for the content word still has some way to go before it reaches full activation. Advancing results in this case because the function word has decayed below the activation level of the following content word and, consequently, the content word is initiated even though it still has some way to go before it reaches full activation (indicated by the dotted line).