A selective deficit for living things after temporal lobectomy for relief of epileptic seizures.

Unilateral left and right temporal lobectomy patients and normal control subjects were tested on confrontation naming, speeded naming, category generation, and category and associate matching tasks. Both groups of patients were disproportionately impaired for living relative to nonliving things in confrontation naming, speeded naming, and category generation. We argue that damage to the temporal lobe impairs lexical retrieval most strongly for living things and that the anterior temporal cortices are convergence zones particularly necessary for retrieving the names of living things.     

Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions

Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self (e.g., the letters in one's name). The authors refer to such preferences as implicit egotism. Ten studies assessed the role of implicit egotism in 2 major life decisions: where people choose to live and what people choose to do for a living. Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whose names resemble their own first or last names (e.g., people named Louis are disproportionately likely to live in St. Louis). Study 6 extended this finding to birthday number preferences. People were disproportionately likely to live in cities whose names began with their birthday numbers (e.g., Two Harbors, MN). Studies 7-10 suggested that people disproportionately choose careers whose labels resemble their names (e.g., people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among dentists). Implicit egotism appears to influence major life decisions. This idea stands in sharp contrast to many models of rational choice and attests to the importance of understanding implicit beliefs.     

The odd effect and multiple meanings in English of the words "odd" and "even"

Under a variety of conditions, people take longer to make judgments about odd than about even digits and digit names. In English the words "odd" and "even" have multiple meanings. Perhaps the multiple meanings of these words are responsible for the slowing of responses to odd stimuli. This hypothesis was tested using participants who spoke no English and in whose native language, Polish, the words for the mathematical concepts of odd and even do not have multiple meanings.     

From chair to "chair": a representational shift account of object labeling effects on memory

What are the consequences of calling things by their names? Six experiments investigated how classifying familiar objects with basic-level names (chairs, tables, and lamps) affected recognition memory. Memory was found to be worse for items that were overtly classified with the category name--as reflected by lower hit rates--compared with items that were not overtly classified. This effect of labeling on subsequent recall is explained in terms of a representational shift account, with labeling causing a distortion in dimensions most reliably associated with the category label. Consistent with this account, effects of labeling were strongly mediated by typicality and ambiguity of the labeled items, with typical and unambiguous items most affected by labeling. Follow-up experiments showed that this effect cannot be explained solely by differences in initial encoding, further suggesting that labeling a familiar image distorts its encoded representation. This account suggests a possible mechanism for the verbal overshadowing effect (J. W. Schooler & T. Y. Engstler-Schooler, 1990).     

Changes to the object recognition system in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type

Do DAT patients show category-specific deficits in object identification, and do they arise from semantic or visual damage? Participants decided whether line drawings of living and nonliving objects matched names at superordinate, basic, or subordinate levels. Patients were most impaired with superordinate decisions. Controls had most difficulty with subordinate decisions. No category-specific deficit was found with patients. Impaired superordinate decisions by the patients support semantic damage. If category-specific deficits arise from damaged semantics, they should have been found. Since they were not, and since patients performed subordinate decisions the best, a visual basis to category specificity is supported. Finally, a living advantage was found with normal observers which cannot be spurious due to differences in concept familiarity since living and nonliving objects were matched for this variable.     

Phonological cues influence sex decisions about novel names

Investigations of first names in English have found that male and female names are distinguished by different phonological characteristics. This paper reports on findings that suggest native speakers of English rely on those same cues when making judgments about the sex of names with which they are unfamiliar. When presented with 40 novel, i.e., "invented" names, 25 university undergraduates judged one-syllable names and consonant-final names as male names; however, they judged two-syllable names and vowel-final names as female names. These findings indicate that certain phonological features are strong enough predictors of sex that they can be used to designate sex even with names never before encountered.     

Beauty Is Only "Name" Deep: The Effect of First-Name On Ratings of Physical Attraction

College students ( n = 197) voted to select a beauty queen from among six photographs equivalent in physical attractiveness, as determined by rankings of 35 students from a separate university. Half the photographs bore a desirable first-name and half were assigned an undesirable first-name. As predicted, firstname had a significant effect on physical attraction: Girls with desirable firstnames received 158 votes to 39 for those with undesirable names. These data were discussed in terms of an additive, rather than an interactive, effect, due to the nature of the task. The strength of these findings was related to the study's ecological validity.     

Cues to referent gender in randomly constructed names.

50 volunteers' assignments of gender to 32 randomly constructed names confirmed previous findings with respect to the structure of actual names (men's names are shorter, women's names tend to end in vowels, especially the schwa vowel) and with respect to the emotionality of sounds in actual names (men's names sound more Active, Nasty, and Unpleasant; women's names sound softer). Assignment of sex to random names was predictable (R>.8) on the basis of combinations of these variables.     

An odd effect: Lengthened reaction times for judgments about odd digits

Eight experiments are reported that first establish and then explicate a serendipitous finding that judgments about whether digits are odd or even take longer for odd than for even digits. The slowing of judgments about odd digits is more pronounced when digit pairs or triples are used, but is still weakly present when a single digit must be classified. A similar effect is seen when judgments of nouns are based on whether the nouns are the names of living or dead objects. Nouns that name dead objects are judged more slowly than ones that name living objects. The concept "alive" is linguistically marked. Past research has shown that unmarked concepts are processed more rapidly than marked ones. The similarity in the pattern of results when digits and words are judged is used to argue that the slower judgments about odd digits are due to the fact that "odd" is a linguistically marked and "even" a linguistically unmarked concept.     

Beauty Is More than "Name" Deep: The Effect of Women's First Names on Ratings of Physical Attractiveness and Personality Attributes

This study investigated the effects of first names on ratings of physical attractiveness and personality attributes. Pictures of female targets varying in physical attractiveness (low, medium, high) were assigned a desirable, neutral, or undesirable first name. In a control group, targets were presented without a first name. Both physical attractiveness ratings and ratings of personality attributes were influenced by targets' physical attractiveness irrespective of the assigned first name.     

性别化名字对个体印象评价及人际交往的影响

名字在个体印象评价和人际交往中发挥着重要作用。本研究结合刻板印象内容模型, 从刻板印象维护视角出发, 通过3个研究考察了性别化名字的热情能力感知, 基于此探究性别化名字对不同性别个体的印象评价及人际交往的影响。结果发现：(1)人们对男性化名字的能力评价高于女性化名字, 对女性化名字的热情评价高于男性化名字; (2)性别化名字影响男性的能力评价和女性的热情评价; (3)性别化名字影响人们对女性的交友偏好, 热情评价在其中起到完全中介作用; 性别化名字影响人们和男性的共事偏好, 能力评价起到完全中介作用。研究揭示了性别化名字影响印象评价的模式, 并为理解人际交往中名字的作用机制提供了新的研究思路。     

The Effects of Names on Perception of Intelligence, Popularity, and Competence

Three experiments were conducted to explore the effects of first names on judgments of intelligence, popularity, and competence. In Experiment 1, first names that were used more often in the past than they are now (called Older Generation names) were rated by a sample of college-aged judges as less popular and less intelligent than were first names that are used more often now than in the past (called Younger Generation names). In addition, male first names tended to have higher ratings of these same qualities than did female first names. In Experiments 2 and 3, either resumes or personal ads were used to provide additional information to the raters. Results similar to those found in Experiment 1 were obtained. In general the present experiment used groups of names rather than individual names so as to control for possible irrelevant and idiosyncratic differences that might be found among individual names. Relevance to research in which men and women are compared was discussed.     

USING STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE PROCEDURES TO TEACH NAME-FACE MATCHING TO ADULTS WITH BRAIN INJURIES

On pretests, 3 men with brain injuries matched dictated names of three therapists to written names, but did not match dictated or written names to photos, produce correct names in response to photos, locate offices given written names, or name therapists on sight. Match-to-sample training established conditional relations between dictated names and photos. Posttests showed the emergence of untrained conditional relations involving photos and written names, indicating development of three classes of equivalent stimuli (each containing a dictated name, photo, and written name). For 1 participant, conditional relations involving photos of office nameplates were also examined, but did not emerge pre- or posttraining. Two participants produced names orally when given photos and sorted written names and faces together after training; the 3rd participant was unavailable for these posttests. After training, 1 participant located and named all three therapists in their offices.     

College Students' Given Names: A Test of the Preference‐Feedback Hypothesis1

According to the preference‐feedback hypothesis, liking generally increases with familiarity up to a point and then declines. However, for stimuli such as given names, liking increases monotonically with familiarity, because given names that become too familiar tend to be chosen less frequently by parents, thus becoming less familiar once again. A college sample of 160 men and 211 women provided potential names for first son and first daughter, as well as reasons for their selections. Comparing given names of the research participants with names that they chose for sons and daughters, high‐frequency participants' names occurred less frequently as choices for sons and daughters' names, although this effect was significant for women's names only. Frequency was mentioned as a reason for choices by 10% to 20% of the sample, and significantly more often for daughters' names than for sons' names.     

The emotional symbolism of two English e-sounds: /i/ as in "cheap" is pleasant and /I/ as in "chip" active

This article aligns the symbolism of the long (/i/) and short (/I/) e sounds in English with the two dimensions of emotional space-Pleasantness and Activation. On the basis of this alignment, the four quadrants of emotional space are labelled Cheerful (high /i/, high /I/), Cheerless (low /i/, low /I/), Tough (low /i/, high /I/), and Tender (high /i/, low /I/). In four phases, data from over 50 samples (mainly, poetry, song lyrics, and names) were plotted and compared in terms of their use of the two e sounds. Significant and meaningful differences among samples were discovered in all phases. The placement of samples in quadrants was additionally informative. Data samples including many long e sounds (/i/) tended to be more Pleasant and those including many short e sounds (/I/) tended to be more Active.     

名字易识认性对被信任者的可信性的影响

从名字可以联想个体的社会身份和生理心理特征。现有研究多从名字寓意角度考察名字的影响。但从加工流畅性角度,名字本身有一个最直观分类：容易识认和难以识认。名字易识认性就可能会对被信任者的可信性产生影响。本研究共有四个被试内实验。前两个实验以编制的名字为实验材料,分别通过让被试判断被信任者的安全性和信任博弈两个范式证明名字易识认性强的个体的可信度更高。后两个实验则选取真实名字为启动材料再次证明了该结论。     

"Let me count the ways:" fostering reasons for living among low-income, suicidal, African American women

Protective factors for fostering reasons for living were examined among low-income, suicidal, African American women. Bivariate logistic regressions revealed that higher levels of optimism, spiritual well-being, and family social support predicted reasons for living. Multivariate logistic regressions indicated that spiritual well-being showed unique predictive value for reasons for living. Further, the multivariate model accurately predicted reasons for living 72% of the time. Partial support was found for a cumulative protective model hypothesizing a linear relationship between the number of protective factors endorsed and increased reasons for living. Implications for community-based preventive and recovery-oriented intervention efforts and future research are discussed.     

Emotion in the sounds of pets' names

Several thousand cats' and dogs' names were compared with each other and with several thousand men's and women's names in terms of their use of various sounds and the emotional associations of these sounds. Emotional associations were scored according to the system developed by Whissell in 2000. In general, cats' names stood in comparison to dogs' names as women's names stood in comparison to men's names. Names from the first group in each pairing included more pleasant and soft phonemes and fewer unpleasant and sad ones than those in the second group (one-way analyses of variance with post hoc LSD tests, p < .0001). As well, pets' names were longer and more easily pronounced by children than the human names (p < .0001).