Age-of-acquisition effects in lexical and episodic memory tasks

Abstract

This paper reports four experiments on the effects of word age of acquisition in verbal tasks. In all cases, multiple-regression analysis was used to assess the relative effects of age as opposed to other potentially relevant word attributes. Experiments 1 and 2 concemed lexical memory tasks. In Experiment 1, picture naming speeds were found to be mainly determined by picture codability and name age of acquisition. In Experiment 2, it was found that when subjects produced words in response to bigram cues, early acquired target words were more likely to be produced than later acquired words, even when frequency and other word attributes were taken into account. The remaining two experiments dealt with the episodie memory tasks of free recall and recognition. No age effects were found in these tasks. It was concluded that early age of acquisition facilitates retrieval from lexical memory but has no significant effect in episodie memory tasks.This paper concerns the effects of word age of acquisition in lexical and episodic memory tasks. The first two experiments reported here involve retrieval from lexical memory in response to pictorial and letter cues, respectively. The remaining two experiments deal with the episodic memory tasks of free recall and recognition memory. Before detailing these experiments, we briefly review previous work on age-of-acquisition effects.In one of the first studies in this area, Carroll and White (1973) found that the rated age of acquisition of picture names was a major determinant of picture naming latency, (H may be noted that the age ratings were highly reliable and correlated well with objective indices of age of acquisition.) In Carroll and White's study, early acquired names were generally produced faster than later acquired names. Further, this effect was not due to the correlation between age and frequency of usage, since age still had a significant correlation with picture naming speed when the effects of name frequency were partialled from age, while the correlation of frequency with speed dwindled to nonsignificance when age was partialled from frequency. This result was of potentially far reaching importance, since it suggested that the many word frequency effects reported in memory, learning, and perception research might be entirely due to the underlying, and hitherto largely unnoticed, variable of age of acquisition. However, subsequent studies (Lachman, 1973; Lachman, Schaffer, Experiments 1, 3, and 4 were earried out with the assistanee of (United Kingdom) SSRC Grant HR 5318/1. Thanks are due to Martin Cooper for the graphie work in Experiment 1. Requests for reprints should be addressed to K. 1. Gilhooly , Psyehology Department, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, Scotland AB9 2UB, U.K. & Hennrikus, 1974) found that both age and frequency can independently affect picture naming latency.The experiments of Lachman and his co-workers are notable for the control exercised over the stimulus "codability" variable, a variable that Carroll and White (1973) did not include in th...

Predictors of timed picture naming in Chinese

“…This is an estimate of the age at which the name of an object is learned, measured with subjective or objective values. Many studies report effects of subjective AoA on picture naming using retrospective adult rated estimates (Carroll & White, 1973;Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 1979;Morrison, Ellis, & Quinlan, 1992) and some studies also report effects of objective AoA-based on children's naming performance-on picture naming (Pind & Tryggvadottir, 2002). Morrison, Chappell, and Ellis (1997) observed a high correlation between rated and objective measures of AoA, and Ellis and Morrison (1998) found that both measures predict adult naming in their own study and in data published by Barry et al (1997) and Snodgrass and Yuditsky (1996).…”

Age of acquisition: Its neural and computational mechanisms.

“…Using a number of experimental paradigms, researchers have shown that the age of word acquisition significantly affects the speed and accuracy with which a word is accessed and processed (Barry, Morrison, & Ellis, 1997;Cuetos, Ellis, & Alvarez, 1999;Ellis & Morrison, 1998;Gerhand & Barry, 1998Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 1979;Lewis, 1999;Meschyan & Hernandez, 2002;Morrison, Chappell, & Ellis, 1997;Morrison & Ellis, 1995. Early learned words typically elicit faster response times than late learned words in word reading, auditory and visual lexical decision, picture naming, and face recognition.…”

Age of acquisition and word frequency: Determinants of object-naming speed and accuracy

“…ever, WF and AoA are naturally confounded, with earlyacquired words tending to be higher in frequency than lateacquired words (Carroll & White, 1973;Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 1979;Morrison et al, 1992). Furthermore, initial investigations of the simultaneous effects of WF and AoA found an effect of AoA, but no effect of WF on objectnaming speed was found after accounting for effects of AoA (Carroll & White, 1973;Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 1979;Morrison et al, 1992).…”

“…Furthermore, initial investigations of the simultaneous effects of WF and AoA found an effect of AoA, but no effect of WF on objectnaming speed was found after accounting for effects of AoA (Carroll & White, 1973;Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 1979;Morrison et al, 1992). However, subsequent studies have established distinguishable effects of WF and AoA (e.g., Barry et al, 1997;Ellis & Morrison, 1998, Experiment 1;Lachman, 1973;Lachman, Shaffer, & Hennrikus, 1974).…”