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Related Experiment Videos

Descriptiveness and proper name retrieval

S Brédart1, T Valentine

  • 1Department of Experimental Psychology (B-32), University of Liège, Belgium.

Memory (Hove, England)
|June 26, 1998
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Proper name retrieval is harder when names lack descriptive meaning. This study found arbitrary names, even common ones, cause more retrieval difficulties than descriptive names, supporting Cohen's hypothesis.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • Proper names are hypothesized to be difficult to retrieve due to their limited semantic content.
  • Cohen (1990) proposed that the lack of attribute information in proper names contributes to retrieval challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To empirically evaluate Cohen's hypothesis regarding the difficulty of proper name retrieval.
  • To investigate the role of name arbitrariness versus descriptiveness in retrieval accuracy.

Main Methods:

  • A face naming task was employed using cartoon and comic-strip characters.
  • Characters were assigned either arbitrary or descriptive names.
  • Retrieval blocks (failures) were recorded during the naming task.

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Main Results:

  • Significantly more retrieval blocks occurred when naming characters with arbitrary names compared to descriptive names.
  • The difficulty of retrieving arbitrary names was not reduced even when they were also common names.
  • Results strongly support the hypothesis that name arbitrariness impacts retrieval vulnerability.

Conclusions:

  • The arbitrariness of a proper name is a key factor influencing its retrieval difficulty.
  • Semantic content, or lack thereof, plays a crucial role in the cognitive processes of name recall.
  • Findings confirm that names conveying little attribute information are more prone to retrieval failures.