Priming Production of People's Names

Abstract

Surnames of celebrities that are English words (e.g. “Wood”, “Bush”, “Sleep”) were used to explore the relationship between production of common names and proper names that share the same phonology. No effect of priming of face naming latency was found from a prime task in which a written common name was presented and was read aloud, even when subjects were informed the words that they would read aloud were surnames. Production of common names to complete a sentence did not prime famous-face naming. However, the reaction time required to name a famous face by articulating the surname only was primed by seeing the written full name of the celebrity, whether the surname was read aloud or an occupation decision or a familiarity decision was made. No effect of priming was found if the test task did not require name production. The results are interpreted in terms of the information-processing model of face, name, and word recognition proposed by Valentine, Brédart, Lawson, and Ward (1991). It is concluded that the effect of repetition reflects greater accessibility of lexical output codes resulting from an increase in the weight on links from person identity nodes to the output lexicon. Access to the output lexicon is assumed to be mandatory from written input. Common names access the output lexicon from the word recognition system rather than the person recognition system and therefore do not prime face naming latency.

Cerebral Laterality for Famous Proper Nouns: Visual Recognition by Normal Subjects

“…The role of contextual features in proper noun processing has been investigated from many points of view (e.g., Seamon & Travis, 1993; for review see Valentine, Brennen, & Brédart, 1996). Our notion is similar to that expressed by Valentine, Moore, and Bredart (1995): In an information processing model, the personally relevant meanings might be said to add weight onto the linkage from person identity to the output lexicon. Our view is also compatible with the ideas of Burgess and Conley (1999) about semantic neighborhoods, which consist of other words related in meaning to the target word; they state that ''neighborhoods for famous PNs (proper nouns) [e.g., Reagan] are quite different'' from lexical neighborhoods for unfamiliar PNs (e.g., John).…”

Exploring a neural-network account of age-of-acquisition effects using repetition priming of faces

“…Prior exposure to a face acts to reduce reaction times in tasks such as face naming (Valentine, Moore, & Bredart, 1995), familiarity judgments (Bruce & Valentine, 1985), and semantic classification (A. W. Ellis, Young, Flude, & Hay, 1987;Lewis & H. D. Ellis, 1999). The repetition-priming effect can be long lasting and is largest when exactly the same view of the primed individual is shown .…”

Phonological priming effects on word retrieval and tip-of-the-tongue experiences in young and older adults.

“…The mechanism responsible for a priming effect, were it to be observed, is a relatively long-term change in connection strength, which is the mechanism of interest in the present research (MacKay, 1987;Valentine et al, 1995;Wheeldon & Monsell, 1992). In contrast, researchers using a very brief prime-to-target-generation interval of a few hundred milliseconds reported that phonologically related prime words facilitated picture naming, and they attributed this to a different mechanism: a very short-lived residual priming in nodes that are common to the prime and target or that spread from prime to target (Collins & Ellis, 1992;McEvoy, 1988;Schriefers, Meyer, & Levelt, 1990).…”