The color naming (Stroop) and picture-word interference (PWI) paradigms play a pivotal role in theorizing about cognitive processes in general, and language production in particular. Despite their assumed similarities, there exist discrepancies. In this study, I compared the effect of distractor word frequency between Stroop and PWI paradigms (in PWI picture naming is faster for high frequency than low frequency word distractors; Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003). In five experiments, I confirm the presence of DFE in both Stroop and PWI paradigms when the naming latencies are longer but the absence of DFE in both paradigms when the naming latencies are shorter and found that when naming latencies are fast, the distractor words are most likely processed to the phonological level by the time targets are named in both paradigms in the last experiment. Thus, my results are consistent with the assumption that the two paradigms operate in the same manner.