All my children: The roles of semantic category and phonetic similarity in the misnaming of familiar individuals

Abstract

Despite knowing a familiar individual (such as a daughter) well, anecdotal evidence suggests that naming errors can occur among very familiar individuals. Here, we investigate the conditions surrounding these types of errors, or misnamings, in which a person (the misnamer) incorrectly calls a familiar individual (the misnamed) by someone else's name (the named). Across 5 studies including over 1,700 participants, we investigated the prevalence of the phenomenon of misnaming, identified factors underlying why it may occur, and tested potential mechanisms. We included undergraduates and MTurk workers and asked questions of both the misnamed and the misnamer. We find that familiar individuals are often misnamed with the name of another member of the same semantic category; family members are misnamed with another family member's name and friends are misnamed with another friend's name. Phonetic similarity between names also leads to misnamings; however, the size of this effect was smaller than that of the semantic category effect. Overall, the misnaming of familiar individuals is driven by the relationship between the misnamer, misnamed, and named; phonetic similarity between the incorrect name used by the misnamer and the correct name also plays a role in misnaming.

Experimentally Induced Single and Repeated Personal Name Confusions: The Impact of Phonological and Semantic Similarity

“…These results concerning the impact of phonological and semantic similarity on name confusions are consistent with the previous retrospective studies investigating name confusions (Brédart & Dardenne, 2015; Deffler et al., 2016; Fiske et al., 1991; Fraas et al., 2002), which also showed that name confusions were influenced by both semantic and phonological similarities. An explanation of why semantically or phonologically related names tend to be more frequently confounded than unrelated ones can be found in the interactive models of word production (see Damian & Martin, 1999; Levelt, 1993; Levelt, 1999; Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1996; Starreveld & La Heij, 1995, 1996; Stemberger, 1985).…”

“…Other similarities between the target and the intruder increased these substitutions, such as gender, age, and other semantic information (having the same occupation, for example). More recently, Griffin and Wangerman (2013) and Deffler, Fox, Ogle, and Rubin (2016) analyzed naturally occurring substitutions made by parents with their children (calling a child by the name of one of his or her brothers or sisters). The authors found that phonological similarity between the siblings’ names increased the occurrence of name substitutions.…”

Diverse Human Families and Pet-friendly Work Environments: Pawternity of Dogs

“…In a study led by the team of Samantha Deffler (2016), it was demonstrated how in the human memory the dogs of the home are cataloged as family members. There are few lapsus linguae where one of the members of the family is called by the name of the dog.…”

Competitors or Teammates

“…Generally, the answer is yes: Semantically related names of people who also share visual features, including similarity in facial features and other measures of physical appearance, are sometimes associated with more person-misnaming errors—that is, use of the wrong name to refer to a familiar person (Brédart & Dardenne, 2015; Griffin & Wangerman, 2013; but see Deffler, Fox, Ogle, & Rubin, 2016). Another type of overlap that increases misnaming errors is phonological (shared sounds); the names produced through misnaming errors are more likely to possess both semantic and phonological properties of the intended name (Brédart & Dardenne, 2015; Brédart & Valentine, 1992; Deffler et al, 2016). For example, phonological similarity, in the form of shared initial or final sounds between the names of siblings (whose names by definition share semantic attributes), increased the frequency with which parents used a sibling’s name instead of the intended name (Griffin & Wangerman, 2013).…”