Competitor effects in naming objects and famous faces

The prior production of an alternative name increases the time taken to name a famous face. For example, naming a picture of the comedy actor “John Cleese” by the name of the character he played in the TV series Fawlty Towers (Basil Fawlty) increases the time required to subsequently produce the name “John Cleese”. This effect has been termed the “nominal competitor effect”. In contrast prior production of a property associated with a famous person has no effect on naming speed. For example, prior production of the name of the TV series Fawlty Towers does not slow subsequent production of “John Cleese”. The experiments reported explored analogous effects in object naming. Experiment 1 examined the effects of prior production of an alternative name (e.g., from American English or British English) and a semantic associate on the time taken to name line drawings of objects. It was found that prior production of an alternative name slowed object naming, but prior production of the name of a semantic associate did not. Experiment 2 demonstrated that cueing a specific name (e.g., the British English name) was not a necessary condition for the nominal competitor effect on object naming. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the nominal competitor effect on naming famous faces was also observed under both cued and uncued naming instructions. The data from both object and face naming are interpreted within the terms of current models of speech production.     

Asymmetric aging effects on semantic and phonological processes: naming in the picture-word interference task

In 2 experiments, participants named pictures while ignoring auditory word distractors. For pictures with homophone names (e.g., ball), distractors semantically related to the nondepicted meaning (e.g., prom) facilitated naming by top-down phonological connections for young but not for older adults. Slowing from unrelated distractors and facilitation from phonologically related distractors were age invariant except in distractors that were both semantically and phonologically related. Only distractors semantically related to the picture interfered more for older than younger adults. These results ar einconsistent with age-linked deficits in inhibition of irrelevant information from either internal or external sources. Rather, aging affects priming transmission in a connectionist network with asymmetric effects on semantic and phonological connections involved in comprehension and production, respectively.     

Semantic distance effects on object and action naming

Graded interference effects were tested in a naming task, in parallel for objects and actions. Participants named either object or action pictures presented in the context of other pictures (blocks) that were either semantically very similar, or somewhat semantically similar or semantically dissimilar. We found that naming latencies for both object and action words were modulated by the semantic similarity between the exemplars in each block, providing evidence in both domains of graded semantic effects.     

Naming faces and naming names: Exploring an interactive activation model of person recognition

Abstract

In this paper we present an interactive activation and competition (LAC) model of name recognition. This is an extension of a previous account of name retrieval (Burton & Bruce, 1992) and is based on a functional model due to Valentine, Bredart, Lawson, and Ward (1991). Several empirical effects of name recognition are simulated: (1) names that are known are read faster than names that are unknown; (2) common names are read faster than rare names; and (3) rare names are recognised as familiar faster than common names. The simulations demonstrate that these complex effects can arise as a natural consequence of the architecture of the LAC model. Finally, we explore a modification of the Valentine et al. functional model, and conclude that the model as originally proposed is best able to account for the available data.     

Some effects of color on naming and recognition of objects

In this article, we investigated the role of color in the recognition and naming of everyday objects. In the first experiment we found that color pictures were named faster than black-and-white and that shape information did not facilitate color naming. Experiment 2 was carried out to determine at which stage of object processing the color facilitation occurred. We found that color had no effect on object recognition but did facilitate object naming, even when color was redundant for discrimination. This did not apply to naming abstract shapes. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiment 2 using different objects and colors. The results showed that color could facilitate but not inhibit object naming and did not affect object recognition.     

The effects of semantic and phonemic prestimulation cues on picture naming in aphasia.

In this study of auditory prestimulation cues, picture naming performances under phonemic and semantic conditions were compared to picture naming performance under a neutral condition. Twenty aphasic subjects named 324 pictures (108 pictures x 3 conditions) each. Responses were scored using a coding system adapted by the investigator from classification systems used by Williams and Canter (1982) and Kohn and Goodglass (1985). Results indicated that naming accuracy was facilitated by phonemic and semantic cues. An examination of the distribution of errors under the three conditions revealed systematic effects of phonemic and semantic cues on the frequency of occurrence of specific error types. Increases in semantic paraphasia proportion scores and decreases in unrelated word error proportion scores were associated with the semantic condition, while increases in phonemic paraphasia proportion scores were associated with the phonemic condition. The finding that naming performance of aphasic adults varies as a function of the type of information provided by the cue is discussed in relation to cascade visual confrontation naming models.     

The effects of surface detail on object categorization and naming

Three experiments are reported examining the effects of surface colour and brightness/texture gradients (photographic detail) on object classification and naming. Objects were drawn from classes with either structurally similar or structurally dissimilar exemplars. In Experiment 1a, object naming was facilitated by both congruent surface colour and photographic detail, with the effects of these two variables combining under-additively. In addition incongruent colour disrupted naming accuracy. These effects tended to be larger on objects from structurally similar classes than on objects from structurally dissimilar classes. Experiment 1b examined superordinate classification. There were again advantages due to congruent colour and photographic detail on responses to objects from both structurally similar and structurally dissimilar classes. Incongruent colour disrupted classification accuracy on structurally distinct but not structurally similar items. For structurally similar items, the advantages of congruent surface attributes on classification were smaller than on naming, but this was not the case for structurally dissimilar items. Experiment 2 examined subordinate classification of structurally similar objects. Now effects of congruent and incongruent colour, but not of photographic detail, were found. Experiment 3 showed that congruent and incongruent colour effects occur only when the colours occupy the internal surfaces of objects. The results suggest that surface details can affect object recognition and naming, depending upon: (1) the degree to which objects must be differentiated for a correct response to be made, and (2) the nature of the rate-limiting process determining performance.     

Two faces,two languages: An fMRI study of bilingual picture naming

This fMRI study explores how nonlinguistic cues modulate lexical activation in the bilingual brain. We examined the influence of face race on bilingual language production in a picture-naming paradigm. Chinese–English bilinguals were presented with pictures of objects and images of faces (Asian or Caucasian). Participants named the picture in their first or second language (Chinese or English) in separate blocks. Face race and naming language were either congruent (e.g., naming in Chinese when seeing an Asian face) or incongruent (e.g., naming in English when seeing an Asian face). Our results revealed that face cues facilitate naming when the socio-cultural identity of the face is congruent with the naming language. The congruence effects are reflected as effective integration of lexical and facial cues in key brain regions including IFG, MFG, ACC, and caudate. Implications of the findings in light of theories of language processing and cultural priming are discussed.     

Orientation-specific effects in picture matching and naming

In two experiments, subjects made timed decisions about the second of two sequentially presented rotated drawings of objects. When the two objects were physically identical, response times to decide whether the two drawings depicted the same object varied as a function of the shortest distance between the orientation of the second drawing and either the orientation of the previous drawing or the upright. This was found for both short (250-msec) and long (2-sec) interstimulus-intervals. The result was also obtained when subjects named the second drawing after deciding whether the first drawing faced left or right. Following repeated experience with the drawings in the left/right task over four blocks of trials, time to name the second drawing in the same-object sequences was independent of orientation. These results suggest that, initially, object- and orientation-specific representations can be formed following a single presentation of a rotated object and subsequently used to identify drawings of the same object at either the same or different orientations. Alignment of the second drawing with either the canonical representation or the new representation at the previous orientation is achieved by normalization through the shortest path. Following experience with the objects, orientation-invariant representations are formed.     

Sex differences and effects of aging on visuomotor coordination.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of aging on men and women in processing information required to reproduce direction and distance on a visuomotor task. Subjects (45 men and 45 women) selected from three age groups (25-34 yr., 45-54 yr., 65-74 yr.) were required to estimate blindly the exact criterion location of a target-point they had identified under one of the following conditions: visual, kinesthetic, and visuokinesthetic. Errors in direction (degrees) and in distance (cm) were recorded. The analysis of the total variability in responding (E) indicated that the women of the 65- to 74-yr. age group were significantly less accurate in estimating distance than were the men of the two older age groups (45 to 54 yr., 65 to 74 yr.) and less accurate than were the women of the 25- to 34-yr. age group. No significant differences in estimating distance were found among the three age groups of men. No significant differences for direction were found between men and women.     

Priming effects for affective vs. neutral faces

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective content. Priming effects were significant for the Affective but not Neutral Task. An Explicit Post-Test indicated no conscious knowledge of the stimulus frequency that was associated with performance facilitation. Faster performance by female vs. male participants, and differential speeds and susceptibility to priming of different emotions were also found. Anger and shock were responded to most rapidly and accurately in several conditions, showed no gender differences, and showed significant priming for both RT and accuracy. Fear and pain were responded to least accurately, were associated with faster female than male reaction time, and the accuracy data showed a kind of reverse priming.     

Priming effects for affective vs. neutral faces

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective content. Priming effects were significant for the Affective but not Neutral Task. An Explicit Post-Test indicated no conscious knowledge of the stimulus frequency that was associated with performance facilitation. Faster performance by female vs. male participants, and differential speeds and susceptibility to priming of different emotions were also found. Anger and shock were responded to most rapidly and accurately in several conditions, showed no gender differences, and showed significant priming for both RT and accuracy. Fear and pain were responded to least accurately, were associated with faster female than male reaction time, and the accuracy data showed a kind of reverse priming.     

Lexical and semantic age-of-acquisition effects on word naming in Spanish

We report a study of the factors that affect reading in Spanish, a language with a transparent orthography. Our focus was on the influence of lexical semantic knowledge in phonological coding. This effect would be predicted to be minimal in Spanish, according to some accounts of semantic effects in reading. We asked 25 healthy adults to name 2,764 mono- and multisyllabic words. As is typical for psycholinguistics, variables capturing critical word attributes were highly intercorrelated. Therefore, we used principal components analysis (PCA) to derive orthogonalized predictors from raw variables. The PCA distinguished components relating to (1) word frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and familiarity; (2) word AoA, imageability, and familiarity; (3) word length and orthographic neighborhood size; and (4) bigram type and token frequency. Linear mixed-effects analyses indicated significant effects on reading due to each PCA component. Our observations confirm that oral reading in Spanish proceeds through spelling–sound mappings involving lexical and sublexical units. Importantly, our observations distinguish between the effect of lexical frequency (the impact of the component relating to frequency, AoA, and familiarity) and the effect of semantic knowledge (the impact of the component relating to AoA, imageability, and familiarity). Semantic knowledge influences word naming even when all the words being read have regular spelling–sound mappings.     

The effects of familiarity and practice on naming pictures of objects

Ss were given a paired-associate learning task, using nonsense shapes as stimuli and object names which varied in Thorndike-Lorge frequency as responses. Between each block of learning trials, Ss named the nonsense shapes and a set of line drawings of objects. While naming latencies for the shapes were unaffected by name frequency, there was an effect of frequency on naming a control set of pictures of objects. The frequency effect for the pictures decreased significantly with practice. When the Ss were asked to name pictures of the objects having the names previously learned for the nonsense shapes, an effect of frequency appeared, the size of the effect being the same as that found for the control pictures after practice. The frequency effect disappeared when the shapes were reintroduced.     

Compound word effects differ in reading,on-line naming,and delayed naming tasks

Bimorphemic compound words (e.g.,blueberry), bimorphemic suffixed words (e.g.,ceaseless), and monomorphemic controls (e.g.,arthritis) were read in neutral sentence contexts in Experiment 1. The main result revealed longer first fixation durations on compound words than on control and suffixed words. Different effects emerged when naming tasks were used. An on-line naming task revealed substantially shorter naming latencies for compound words than for control and suffixed words. Naming latencies for compound and control words were equivalent in a delayed naming task. These results indicate that on-line naming latencies and word-viewing durations may yield diverging results. They also suggest that activation of constituent words of compound words occurs independently from the specification of conventional word meanings.     

Familiarity effects on categorization levels of faces and objects

It is well established that faces, in contrast to objects, are categorized as fast or faster at the individual level (e.g., Bill Clinton) than at the basic-level (e.g., human face). This subordinate-shift from basic-level categorization has been considered an outcome of visual expertise with processing faces. However, in the present study we found that, similar to familiar faces, categorization of individually-known familiar towers is also faster at the individual level than at the basic-level in naïve participants. In addition, category-verification of familiar stimuli, at basic and superordinate levels, was slower and less accurate compared to unfamiliar stimuli. Thus, the existence of detailed semantic information, regardless of expertise, can induce a shift in the default level of object categorization from basic to individual level. Moreover, the individually-specific knowledge is not only more easily-retrieved from memory but it might also interfere with accessing more general category information.     

Color naming and the phototoxic effects of sunlight on the eye

Many languages have no basic color term for "blue." Instead, they call short–wavelength stimuli "green" or "dark." We show that this cultural, linguistic phenomenon could result from accelerated aging of the eye because of high, chronic exposure to ultraviolet–B (UV–B) in sunlight (e.g., phototoxic lens brunescence). Reviewing 203 world languages, we found a significant relationship between UV dosage and color naming: In low–UV localities, languages generally have the word "blue"; in high–UV areas, languages without "blue" prevail. Furthermore, speakers of these non–"blue" languages often show blue–yellow color vision deficiency. We tested our phototoxicity hypothesis in a color–naming experiment, using computerized, colorimetric simulations of Munsell colors as viewed through clear and brunescent lenses. As predicted, our young subjects used "blue" as in English when the simulated lens was clear, but named colors as in tropical languages when the lens was dense. Our within–subjects design precludes a cultural explanation for this result.     

Spacing effects on the memory for faces

25 undergraduate women studied 12 stimulus pictures of female faces successively presented in spaced or massed conditions and made affective judgments for the pictures along a dimension of like to dislike. One week after the exposure (study) period, subjects were given an identification test comprised of photographs of the same female faces with different expressions. Analysis showed that the pictures presented in the spaced condition were more frequently and accurately identified than those presented under the massed condition and that affective judgment was unrelated to conditions of presentation.