Examining the influence of picture format on children’s naming responses

Abstract

Digital photography has facilitated the use of more ecological stimuli than line drawings as experimental stimuli. However, there is lack of evidence regarding the effect of the picture format on children’s naming agreement. The present work investigated whether the format of presentation of the pictures (line drawing or photograph) affects naming task performance in children. Two naming task experiments are reported using 106 concepts depicted both as a photograph and as a matched drawing delineated directly from the photograph. Thirty-eight and thirty-four Spanish-speaking children from 8 to 10 years old participated in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, respectively. We examined name agreement measures (H index, percentage of modal name, and alternative responses) and subjective scales (familiarity and visual complexity). The results revealed a significant main effect of format in all of the variables except for familiarity, indicating better name agreement indices and higher visual complexity values for the photograph format than for the line drawing format. Additionally, line drawings were more likely to produce alternative incorrect names. The implications of these findings for psychoeducational research and practice are discussed.

Cumulative semantic cost without successful naming

“…Some methodological changes were introduced. First, it has been demonstrated that photographs increase name agreement and correct response rates in comparison to black-and-white drawings in both adults (Salmon et al, 2014) and children (Martínez & Matute, 2019). Thus, to reduce stimulus-specific effects, color photographs were used in Study 2.…”

PicPsy: A new bank of 106 photographs and line drawings with written naming norms for Spanish-speaking children and adults

“…We provide norms for two different picture formats (photographs and line drawings). Note, however, that we did not use an experimental design in order to examine differences between formats, because previous literature has already shown that line drawings and photographs have different characteristics that can affect naming performance in children [ 9 ] and in adults [ 7 ]. To consult detailed norms for each particular stimulus in line drawing and photograph see the data file.…”

“…It has been showed that there are shorter naming latencies, higher naming accuracy [ 6 , 7 ], and different sources of name disagreement [ 8 ] for photographs than for line drawings. Similarly, in a recent comparison of photographs versus line drawings, Martínez and Matute [ 9 ] showed that children produce better name agreement indices, give fewer incorrect alternative names, and rate as visually more complex the images represented in photographs than in line drawings. Moreover, some researchers have suggested the existence of differences in perceptual processing of photographs versus line drawing, such as, for instance, stronger embodiment representations for photographs of manipulable objects as compared to line drawings [ 10 ].…”

“…Therefore, attending to the intercultural differences, and given that Spanish is one of the most frequently used languages in the world, we believe it is important to develop a normative picture naming bank for Castilian Spanish-speaking children. In addition, previous research has focused in line-drawing stimuli, but nowadays the availability of high definition photographs as experimental stimuli is increasing and, as mentioned above, they cannot be used interchangeably [ 9 ]. However, as far as we know, no photograph norms from children has been published.…”

“…Normative studies presenting standardized sets of pictures have been carried out with both the spoken naming task (e.g., [ 3 , 30 , 32 , 43 , 46 ]) and the written naming task (e.g., [ 2 , 27 , 28 , 33 , 44 , 45 , 47 , 49 , 50 ]). Some studies with children have also carried out the picture naming task in a written form [ 9 , 34 ]. Nevertheless, these written naming studies are limited to those that included older children, thus being able to ensure that participants had some minimal orthographic skills to carry out the written task.…”