Age-of-acquisition effects in delayed picture-naming tasks

Abstract

We report two experiments that explored the linguistic locus of age-of-acquisition effects in picture naming by using a delayed naming task that involved only a low proportion of trials (25 %) while, for the large majority of the trials (75 %), participants performed another task-that is, the prevalent task. The prevalent tasks were semantic categorization in Experiment 1a and grammatical-gender decision in Experiments 1b and 2. In Experiment 1a, in which participants were biased to retrieve semantic information in order to perform the semantic categorization task, delayed naming times were affected by age of acquisition, reflecting a postsemantic locus of the effect. In Experiments 1b and 2, in which participants were biased to retrieve lexical information in order to perform the grammatical gender decision task, there was also an age-of-acquisition effect. These results suggest that part of the age-of-acquisition effect in picture naming occurs at the level at which the phonological properties of words are retrieved.Keywords Speech production . Psycholinguistics . Age-ofacquisition . Picture naming It has been demonstrated that pictures whose names were acquired early in life are named faster and more accurately than pictures whose names were acquired later (e.g., Brysbaert & Ghyselinck, 2006). The issue of age-of-acquisition (hereafter, AoA) effects in speech production has a rich tradition of empirical research. Picture naming entails several cognitive stages of processing, such as perceptual processing, semantic access, lexical selection, and phonological encoding. Empirical research into AoA effects at the first two stages of processing has already been provided. The fact that AoA interacts with the visual degradation of the stimulus, but not with name frequency, suggests that part of the phenomenon arises at the perceptual level (Catling, Dent, & Williamson, 2008). Evidence for a semantic locus of the phenomenon has come, for instance, from semantic categorization tasks, in which participants were required to classify pictures on the basis of semantic information. The results showed faster reaction times (RTs) for early-acquired than for late-acquired items (e.g., Johnston & Barry, 2005). Beyond these prelexical sources of the phenomenon, in the present research we focused on AoA effects ascribed at linguistic stages-that is, lexical selection and phonological encoding.In order to search for a lexical source of the AoA phenomenon, Belke, Brysbaert, Meyer, and Ghyselinck (2005) exploited the semantic cyclic cost in picture naming, which refers to the observation that naming latencies are slower when pictures are presented in blocks containing other semantic-coordinate pictures than when they are presented in blocks containing non-semantic-coordinate pictures. Under the assumption that the semantic cyclic cost reflects lexical selection difficulties, if part of the AoA phenomenon has a lexical localization, an interaction should occur between the cyclic cost and AoA. This prediction was confirmed, ...

First learned words are not forgotten: Age-of-acquisition effects in the tip-of-the-tongue experience

“…Such a difference in the formats of the stored phonological representation would allow earlyacquired words to access their phonological representations more rapidly, resulting in shorter naming latencies. Although this hypothesis has been challenged by compelling evidence and lacks convincing evidence supporting it (e.g., Monaghan & Ellis, 2002), the notion that AoA may arise, at least in part, during phonological encoding has been recently supported by other studies (e.g., Hernandez, & Fiebach, 2006;Kittredge, Dell, Verkuilen, & Schwartz, 2008;Navarrete, Scaltritti, Mulatti, & Peressotti, 2013). A second line of research, first advanced by Bates, Burani, D'Amico, and Barca (2001), hypothesizes that the AoA effect is mainly localized at the level of lexical retrieval.…”

“…It therefore seems reasonable to hypothesize that AoA does not selectively affect a single stage of processing during speech production, but that AoA effects are distributed across several stages (Brysbaert & Ghyselinck, 2006;Catling & Johnston, 2009;Ellis & Lambon Ralph, 2000;Holmes & Ellis, 2006;Navarrete et al, 2013). Accordingly, a large empirical and computational tradition has focused on the factors that determine the phenomenon rather than on the layer of processing within the speech production system at which the phenomenon is localized.…”

Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition

“…It has, however, been argued that AoA may have effects at multiple loci within the object and word processing systems, and that one of those loci may be the perceptual analysis of visual object features (Brysbaert and Ghyselinck, 2006;Hernandez and Li, 2007;Johnston and Barry, 2005;Navarette et al, 2013). For example, Catling et al (2008) found that overlaying irrelevant contours on object pictures increased the magnitude of the AoA effect on naming speed and argued that this reflected a perceptual component in the AoA effect on object recognition (see also Catling and Johnston, 2009).…”

“…Pre-exposure to picture stimuli has been used in other cognitive and MEG studies of object recognition to reduce error rates during scanning (e.g., Hultén et al, 2009;Levelt et al, 1998;Navarette et al, 2013;Vihla et al, 2006). In order to increase the power of the experiment, the stimuli were presented 6 times in total across six blocks of trials, with one presentation of each stimulus per block and an average of 67 trials between one presentation of a stimulus and the next.…”

Typing pictures: Linguistic processing cascades into finger movements

“…The effects of semantic and lexical variables such as familiarity, age of acquisition and word frequency, which are typically considered to affect lexical retrieval at a central level, have been repeatedly reported in response times in both picture naming and writing tasks (e.g., Almeida, Knobel, Finkbeiner, & Caramazza, 2007;Barry, Hirsh, Johnston, & Williams, 2001;Belke, Brysbaert, Meyer, & Ghyselinck, 2005;Bonin, Roux, Barry, & Canell, 2012;Catling & Johnston, 2009;Caramazza, 1997;Cycowicz, Friedman, Rothstein, & Snoodgrass, 1997;Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999;Navarrete, Scaltritti, Mulatti, & Peressotti, 2013;Peressotti, Nicoletti, Rumiati, Job, 1995;. Once word forms have been retrieved, sublexical representations then also become available and can affect the speaker or writer's performance (e.g., Gentner, Larochélle, & Grudin, 1988).…”