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Bannon J, Ferreira VS, Stasenko A, Gollan TH. Competition accumulates in successive retrieval of proper names. Mem Cognit 2024; 52:197-210. [PMID: 37721701 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-023-01455-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/19/2023]
Abstract
Proper names are especially prone to retrieval failures and tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs)-a phenomenon wherein a person has a strong feeling of knowing a word but cannot retrieve it. Current research provides mixed evidence regarding whether related names facilitate or compete with target-name retrieval. We examined this question in two experiments using a novel paradigm where participants either read a prime name aloud (Experiment 1) or classified a written prime name as famous or non-famous (Experiment 2) prior to naming a celebrity picture. Successful retrievals decreased with increasing trial number (and was dependent on the number of previously presented similar famous people) in both experiments, revealing a form of accumulating interference between multiple famous names. However, trial number had no effect on TOTs, and within each trial famous prime names increased TOTs only in Experiment 2. These results can be explained within a framework that assumes competition for selection at the point of lexical retrieval, such that successful retrievals decrease after successive retrievals of proper names of depicted faces of semantically similar people. By contrast, the effects of written prime words only occur when prime names are sufficiently processed, and do not provide evidence for competition but may reflect improved retrieval relative to a "don't know" response.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julie Bannon
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.
| | - Victor S Ferreira
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
| | - Alena Stasenko
- Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
| | - Tamar H Gollan
- Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
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Ouyang M, Cai X, Zhang Q. Aging Effects on Phonological and Semantic Priming in the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Evidence From a Two-Step Approach. Front Psychol 2020; 11:338. [PMID: 32174876 PMCID: PMC7056892 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00338] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2019] [Accepted: 02/12/2020] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
The mechanism underlying the age difference in spoken word production remains controversial. We used a two-step approach proposed by Gollan and Brown (2006) to investigate the semantic and phonological retrieval deficits when tip-of-the-tongue occurs in young and older adults. Importantly, we controlled the inhibition ability in both older and young groups. In experiment 1 with a people pictures naming task, older adults produced more TOTs than young adults, and they suffered from phonological retrieval deficit rather than semantic retrieval deficit in speaking. In experiment 2 with a priming paradigm, participants were presented semantically related or phonologically related names before target pictures, which formed semantic or phonological priming conditions for lexical access. Compared with young adults, older adults showed a greater effect of phonological priming on decreasing TOTs occurrence. For semantic retrieval deficit, older adults exhibited a smaller phonological facilitation effect and a larger semantic interference effect than young adults. For phonological retrieval deficit, older adults presented a larger phonological facilitation effect in the first-name related priming condition than the first-syllable related priming condition, whereas young adults showed similar facilitation effects between the two phonological priming conditions. Our findings provide consistent evidence for the transmission deficit hypothesis, and highlight that aging affects bidirectional connections between semantic and phonological nodes in speech production.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mingkun Ouyang
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Xiao Cai
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Qingfang Zhang
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
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Pistono A, Busigny T, Jucla M, Cabirol A, Dinnat AL, Pariente J, Barbeau EJ. An Analysis of Famous Person Semantic Memory in Aging. Exp Aging Res 2019; 45:74-93. [PMID: 30702032 DOI: 10.1080/0361073x.2018.1560118] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND In contrast to most memory systems that decline with age, semantic memory tends to remain relatively stable across the life span. However, what exactly is stable remains unclear. Is it the quantity of information available or the organization of semantic memory, i.e., the connections between semantic items? Even less is known about semantic memory for celebrities, a subsystem of semantic memory. In the present study, we studied the organization of person-specific semantic memory and its stability in aging. METHODS We designed a word association task based on a previous study, which consisted in providing the first word that came to the mind of the participants (15 participants for each age group 20-30, 40-50 and 60-70 years old) for 144 celebrities. We developed a new taxonomy of associated responses as the responses associated with celebrities name could in principle be very varied. RESULTS We found that most responses (>90%) could be grouped into five categories (subjective; superordinate general; superordinate specific; imagery and activities). The elderly group did not differ from the other two groups in term of errors or reaction time suggesting they performed the task well. However, they also provided associations that were less precise and less based on imagery. In contrast, the middle-age group provided the most precise associations. CONCLUSION These results support the idea of a durable person-specific semantic memory in aging but show changes in the type of associations that elders provide. Future work should aim at studying patients with early semantic impairment, as they could be different from the healthy elders on such semantic association task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aurélie Pistono
- a Toulouse NeuroImaging Center , Université de Toulouse, Inserm, UPS , Toulouse , France.,b URI Octogone-Lordat (EA 4156) , Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès , Toulouse , France
| | - Thomas Busigny
- c Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CNRS, Cerco, UMR5549) , UPS , Toulouse , France.,d Institute of Psychology , Université Catholique de Louvain , Louvain-la-Neuve , Belgium
| | - Mélanie Jucla
- b URI Octogone-Lordat (EA 4156) , Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès , Toulouse , France
| | - Amélie Cabirol
- c Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CNRS, Cerco, UMR5549) , UPS , Toulouse , France
| | - Anne-Lucie Dinnat
- c Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CNRS, Cerco, UMR5549) , UPS , Toulouse , France
| | - Jérémie Pariente
- a Toulouse NeuroImaging Center , Université de Toulouse, Inserm, UPS , Toulouse , France.,e Service de Neurologie et Pôle Neurosciences , CHU de Toulouse , Toulouse , France
| | - Emmanuel J Barbeau
- c Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CNRS, Cerco, UMR5549) , UPS , Toulouse , France
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Brédart S. The cognitive psychology and neuroscience of naming people. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2017; 83:145-154. [PMID: 29038031 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.10.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/24/2017] [Revised: 10/08/2017] [Accepted: 10/09/2017] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
The use of proper names enables us to designate entities, including people, at a very specific level of categorization: the unique entity or the individual. The paper presents a general overview of psychological/cognitive and neuroscientific studies that have compared the production of proper names, in particular people's names, with the production of common nouns during the last thirty years. The search for specific brain correlates of proper naming included single-case and group studies of patients with brain lesions, and studies utilizing functional neuroimaging or brain electrical stimulation with healthy participants. These studies have led neuroscientists to hypothesize that the recall of proper names involves a rather complex network including mainly left frontal and temporal regions. Behavioural evidence supports the view that proper names are more difficult to recall than common names, and scientists have proposed different explanations for this relative difficulty. Finally, several new directions for future research are proposed to improve our understanding of both cognitive processes and their brain correlates involved during proper name recall.
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Affiliation(s)
- Serge Brédart
- Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium.
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Abstract
Research has documented that proper names are more difficult to learn and remember than other types of words. Various causes of this difficulty have been proposed to better understand how proper names are represented in memory and the degree to which names compete with each other. In the retrieval of names, some studies show competition, whereas other studies find facilitation. During comprehension, names demonstrate competition by causing a Moses illusion: People erroneously answer invalid questions such as “How many animals did Moses take on the ark?”, failing to detect that Noah is the correct name for the question. Errors in both name retrieval and comprehension are more likely when the correct name and distractor name sound similar, share biographical characteristics, or have some visual resemblance. However, shared visual information has played a competitive role more consistently in name comprehension than retrieval, an asymmetry that remains to be investigated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lise Abrams
- Department of Psychology, University of Florida
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All my children: The roles of semantic category and phonetic similarity in the misnaming of familiar individuals. Mem Cognit 2016; 44:989-99. [DOI: 10.3758/s13421-016-0613-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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First learned words are not forgotten: Age-of-acquisition effects in the tip-of-the-tongue experience. Mem Cognit 2015; 43:1085-103. [DOI: 10.3758/s13421-015-0525-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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White KK, Abrams L, Frame EA. Semantic category moderates phonological priming of proper name retrieval during tip-of-the-tongue states. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2013. [DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2012.658408] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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Abstract
Several findings showed that semantic information is more likely to be retrieved from recognised faces than from recognised voices. Earlier experiments, which investigated the recall of biographical information following person recognition, used stimuli that were pre-experimentally familiar to the participants, such as famous people's voices and faces. We propose an alternative method to compare the participants' ability to associate semantic information with faces and voices. The present experiments allowed a very strict control of frequency of exposure to pre-experimentally unfamiliar faces and voices and ensured the absence of identity clues in the spoken extracts. In Experiment 1 semantic information was retrieved from the presentation of a name. In Experiment 2 semantic and lexical information was retrieved from faces and/or voices. A memory advantage for faces over voices was again observed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine Barsics
- Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behaviour, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
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11
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Abstract
The tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT) is the feeling that accompanies temporary inaccessibility of an item that a person is trying to retrieve. TOTs have been studied experimentally since the seminal work of Brown and McNeill (1966). TOTs are experiences that accompany some failed or slow retrievals, and they can result in changes in retrieval behavior itself, allowing us to study the interplay among experience, retrieval, and behavior. We often attribute the experience of the TOT to the unretrieved target, but TOTs are based on a variety of cues, heuristics, or sources of evidence, such as partial information, related information, and cue familiarity, that predict the likelihood of overcoming retrieval failure. We present a synthesis of the direct-access view, which accounts for retrieval failure, and the heuristic-metacognitive view, which accounts for the experience of the TOT. We offer several avenues for future research and applications of TOT theory and data.
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Abstract
Two experiments are reported that revisit the issue of why people's names are more difficult to recall than common names such as the names of objects. In Experiment 1, retrieval of the names of a set of object pictures was compared with recall of a set of names of famous faces. The object and face sets were matched for preexperimental familiarity. The results showed significantly more tip-of-the tongue (TOT) states and significantly poorer name recall for faces than for objects. Although the overall numbers of incorrect answers for the two sets of items did not differ, the incorrect answers in the face condition were mostly "don't know" responses, whereas incorrect answers for objects were mostly alternative names. In Experiment 2, written definitions were used instead of pictures, and target items were selected so as to keep the number of alternatives to a minimum. Under these circumstances, there were no differences in either the number of items correctly named or the number of TOTs for common and people's names. These findings are consistent with the views of Brédart (Memory, 1, 351-366, 1993), who argued that there are fewer documented TOTs for common names because a semantically related alternative often comes to mind when a participant is experiencing, or is about to experience, a retrieval failure.
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Barsics C, Brédart S. Recalling episodic information about personally known faces and voices. Conscious Cogn 2011; 20:303-8. [DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2009] [Revised: 03/08/2010] [Accepted: 03/12/2010] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
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Griffin ZM. Retrieving Personal Names, Referring Expressions, and Terms of Address. PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING AND MOTIVATION 2010. [DOI: 10.1016/s0079-7421(10)53009-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
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