How brand names are special: brands, words, and hemispheres

Previous research has consistently shown differences between the processing of proper names and of common nouns, leading to the belief that proper names possess a special neuropsychological status. We investigate the category of brand names and suggest that brand names also have a special neuropsychological status, but one which is different from proper names. The findings suggest that the hemispheric lexical status of the brand names is mixed--they behave like words in some respects and like nonwords in others. Our study used familiar upper case brand names, common nouns, and two different types of nonwords ("weird" and "normal") differing in length, as stimuli in a lateralized lexical decision task (LDT). Common nouns, brand names, weird nonwords, and normal nonwords were recognized in that decreasing order of speed and accuracy. A right visual field (RVF) advantage was found for all four lexical types. Interestingly, brand names, similar to nonwords, were found to be less lateralized than common nouns, consistent with theories of category-specific lexical processing. Further, brand names were the only type of lexical items to show a capitalization effect: brand names were recognized faster when they were presented in upper case than in lower case. In addition, while string length affected the recognition of common nouns only in the left visual field (LVF) and the recognition of nonwords only in the RVF, brand names behaved like common nouns in exhibiting length effects only in the LVF.