Name Retrieval Research Articles

Remote Memory and Lexical Retrieval in a Case of Frontal Pick's Disease

To examine the status of remote memory and lexical retrieval processes in a patient with frontal lobe-type dementia studied serially during an 18-month period. Longitudinal single-case study. University hospital. A 67-year-old man presented to the hospital with progressive frontal lobe dysfunction confirmed by neuropsychological testing and single photon emission-computed tomographic scan. Postmortem brain examination demonstrated focal atrophy of the orbitofrontal region of the frontal lobe and medial temporal structures with abundant Pick's bodies and Pick's cells. Anterograde memory was assessed on a range of free recall and recognition tests using verbal and nonverbal material. Remote memory was assessed by Famous Faces and Famous Events tests and the Crovitz test of remote personal memory. Lexical retrieval was examined using initial-letter and semantic category-based fluency tasks. Initially there was a dissociation between anterograde memory, which was severely impaired, and relatively spared remote memory. Within retrograde memory there was evidence of selective difficulty in retrieving contextually rich and time-specific personal memories and in dating personal and public memories. In contrast, retrieval of names of famous persons and recognition of famous events was relatively normal. As the disease progressed, performance on all remote memory tests worsened, but without a temporally graded pattern. Lexical retrieval was markedly impaired and affected to an equivalent degree performance on initial-letter and category fluency tasks. These findings are interpreted in the context of a general retrieval deficit resulting from the interruption of frontostriatal circuits.

A Study of Anomia: Evidence for a Distinction Between Nominal and Propositional Language

We describe our investigations of the word retrieval abilities of a patient (NOR) with a very severe anomia. NOR had the greatest difficulty naming even very common objects to confrontation yet his word comprehension, word repetition and reading skills were intact. We documented the efficacy of different types of cues for name retrieval. Phonological and semantic cues were either ineffective or had a minor effect. By contrast a sentence frame even a low probability sentence frame (e.g. I went to the shop to buy a ...?) had a very significant facilitatory effect for object naming. In a series of experiments we explored the basis of this facilitation. It was shown that neither a picture frame, an associated verb, nor a syntactically correct but semantically meaningless sentence frame were effective cues. Our findings challenge the orthodox linear models of object naming. We interpret our observations in the context of Luria's distinction between nominative and propositional language. It is suggested that there may be two ‘routes’ to name retrieval, one that utilises a nominative system and an alternative one that utilises an on-line language processor that constructs propositional speech. It is the integrity of this latter system that could account for the facilitation of naming by a sentence frame in NOR, and also for the frequently oberseved phenomenon of the preservation of fluent speech in patients with a grave anomia.

Langual

LANGUAL, a computer-based food-description language, uses standardized vocabulary to describe specific characteristics of foods and food products. Each food product in a database is described by a set of descriptors from the following factors: product type; food source; part of plant or animal; physical state, shape, or form; extent of heat treatment; cooking method; treatment applied; preservation method; packing medium; container or wrapping; food contact surface; consumer group/dietary use/label claim; geographic places and regions; and adjunct characteristics. The purpose of LANGUAL is to allow rapid, accurate retrieval of food names from food-related databases relative to descriptive terms for these factors. The major advantages of LANGUAL are the speed and specificity of the retrievals and the flexibility of the system relative to change and updating.

Memory for proper names: a review.

Abstract Proper names have a frustrating propensity to be forgotten. A considerable amount of laboratory and naturalistic data has demonstrated this vulnerability of proper names to memory errors both in learning new names and in retrieving familiar names. Moreover, retrieval of familiar proper names is especially affected in old age and in some cases of aphasia. This pattern of vulnerability offers an important opportunity for gaining insight into basic memory processes and architecture by identifying the characteristics of proper names that disrupt memory.

Naming faces and naming names: exploring an interactive activation model of person recognition.

In this paper we present an interactive activation and competition (IAC) model of name recognition. This is an extension of a previous account of name retrieval (Burton & Bruce, 1992) and is based on a functional model due to Valentine, Bredart, Lawson, and Ward (1991). Several empirical effects of name recognition are simulated: (1) names that are known are read faster than names that are unknown; (2) common names are read faster than rare names; and (3) rare names are recognised as familiar faster than common names. The simulations demonstrate that these complex effects can arise as a natural consequence of the architecture of the IAC model. Finally, we explore a modification of the Valentine et al. functional model, and conclude that the model as originally proposed is best able to account for the available data.

Retrieval of proper names: Testing the models

The predictions from two theoretical models of name retrieval were tested in three experiments. The Bruce & Young (1986) model assumes serial access, first to semantic information about a person and then to the person's name. According to this model, names are harder to recall than semantic information because access to the name occurs after, and is dependent on access to the semantic information. The architecture of the Interactive Activation and Competition model (Burton & Bruce, 1992) ensures that information which is unique or highly distinctive receives less activation. According to this model, names are harder to recall because they are more distinctive than semantic information. Experiment 1 tested the serial access assumption by comparing immediate recall of names, occupations, or both names and occupations when these were associated with unfamiliar faces. The results were difficult to reconcile with the serial access assumption. Experiment 2 tested the uniqueness assumption by manipulating the distinctiveness of the names and occupations and, contrary to the IAC model, distinctiveness was found to confer an advantage on recall of both names and occupations. Experiment 3 showed that distinctive names were learned faster and were better retained after a 48‐hour delay. These results suggest that the IAC model requires modification.

Age of acquisition, not word frequency, affects object naming, not object recognition.

Word frequency is widely believed to affect object naming speed, despite several studies in which it has been reported that frequency effects may be redundant upon age of acquisition. We report, first, a reanalysis of data from the study by Oldfield and Wingfield (1965), which is standardly cited as evidence for a word frequency effect in object naming; then we report two new experiments. The reanalysis of Oldfield and Wingfield shows that age of acquisition is the major determinant of naming speed, and that frequency plays no independent role when its correlation with other variables is taken into account. In Experiment 1, age of acquisition and phoneme length proved to be the primary determinants of object naming speed. Frequency, prototypicality, and imageability had no independent effect. In Experiment 2, subjects classified objects into two semantic categories (natural or man-made). Prototypicality and semantic category were the only variables to have a significant effect on reaction time, with no effect of age of acquisition, frequency, imageability, or word length. We conclude that age of acquisition, not word frequency, affects the retrieval and/or execution of object names, not the process of object recognition. The locus of this effect is discussed, along with the possibility that words learned in early childhood may be more resistant to the effects of brain injury in at least some adult aphasics than words learned somewhat later.

Linear and nonlinear effects of aging on categorizing and naming faces.

Subjects aged 54-84 performed 5 separate tasks involving various aspects of face processing: structural decisions (1), familiarity decisions (2), semantic decisions (3), first-name decisions (4), and name retrieval (5). For the categorization tasks (1-4), the mean reaction times for the older subjects (over 65) were plotted against the corresponding means for the younger subjects (under 65). This produced a linear function (slope greater than 1, intercept less than 0), providing only partial support for a simple, multiplicative model of cognitive slowing with age. Reaction time distributions were also plotted for each of the 5 tasks (older vs. younger subjects). The resulting functions were almost perfectly linear, with the exception of name retrieval, which was exponential with respect to age. This was attributed to the increased probability of a tip-of-the-tongue state with age caused by insufficient activation at the level of the name information (the final state of face identification).

Investigating the recall inhibition effect: A test of practical considerations

Alba and Chattopadhyay (1985, 1986) have demonstrated that having consumers think about a familiar brand can interfere with the retrieval of competitive brand names, including those that might otherwise be considered for purchase. However, their research is silent about two issues of pragmatic importance. First, is it possible to inhibit retrieval of the consumer's preferred brand? Second, can an unfamiliar brand evoke recall inhibition? Our findings indicate that recall inhibition does not extend to the preferred brand. Our findings further suggest that recall inhibition can be induced by cueing consumers with an unfamiliar brand name, but that such inhibition is less pervasive than evoked by a highly familiar brand name.

The word-retrieval deficit hypothesis and developmental dyslexia

An overview of a systematic research program on the relationship between subprocesses of naming and reading development is provided. In Phase 1 a battery of naming and reading tasks was selected based on a theoretical model drawn from the cognitive, psycholinguistic, and neuropsychological research traditions. In Phase 2 the battery was cross-validated in a cross-sectional study. In Phase 3 a 5-year longitudinal study examined the predictive relationships between subprocesses of naming and reading development. In Phase 4 a pilot treatment study for dyslexics was begun to increase their breadth and depth of word knowledge and to improve their ability to retrieve words accurately and rapidly. Evidence is reported that dyslexic children have a specific deficit in rapid retrieval of names. It is speculated that speed of naming problems may be related to problems in rate of processing in other domains; a deficit in a specific timing mechanism is considered.

Recall of object names and colors of objects in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

The Subject Performed Task (SPT) was used in order to determine whether normal older adults and patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) differ in the ability to remember verbal and physical information. Mildly and moderately demented patients and normal controls were instructed to perform a series of SPTs involving objects, and were examined on recall of the object names and the colors of the objects. It was assumed that encoding and retrieval of the object names require a more extensive semantic elaboration than encoding and retrieval of the colors of the objects. Results showed that normal older adults performed at a higher level than the groups of mildly and moderately demented patients, and that the colors of the objects were better remembered than the object names for all groups. However, the magnitude of impairment in the AD groups was equal for both types of information. These results are in agreement with the notion that the episodic memory impairment in AD is global, rather than mediated by deficits in semantic memory.

Resolving semantically induced tip-of-the-tongue states for proper nouns

Three experiments are reported in which tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTSs) were induced in subjects by reading them pieces of item-specific information. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects attempted to name famous people. These experiments showed that, in a TOTS, seeing a picture of the face of the target person did not facilitate naming, whereas the initials of the person's name did. In Experiment 3, a similar result was obtained with a landmark-naming task. The results of the experiments are discussed with reference to current models of memory structure and name retrieval.

Recognition and retrieval of proper names: Age differences in the fan effect

Abstract A spreading activation model was applied, to explain. some aspects of retrieval failure for proper names. The fact that retrieval failures occur more frequently for well-known names than for unfamiliar names, and the increased incidence of name blocking in the elderly, are both interpreted in terms of the fan effect. Fanning is created when multiple far are known about a single person and results in slower and more error-prone retrieval, but the fan effect can be counteracted if the facts form an integrated set. Three groups of subjects—young, middle-aged, and elderly—learned sets of name-attribute statements in three conditions. In the no-fan condition, each name was uniquely paired with a single attribute; in the fan condition, each name was linked with three different attributes; in the crossed-fan condition, different names shared some of the same attributes. Verification RTs and cued recall responses showed that all subjects found the crossed-fan condition most difficult, but, when name-attr...

Progressive aphasia in a patient with Pick's disease

Although Pick's disease is generally considered as a dementia characterized by signs of frontal lobe dysfunction, it can present with selective language defects rather than with cognitive decline. In this study, we report prospective and serial clinical, neuropsychological, and neuroradiologic observations in a 59-year-old man whose prominent disturbance was in the retrieval and learning of names denoting concrete entities and actions. Postmortem study confirmed the diagnosis of Pick's disease and revealed that neuronal loss and gliosis were most prominent in left anterior temporal cortices. The findings are in keeping with evidence that the left anterior temporal cortices and interconnected hippocampal system are critically involved in the learning and retrieval of verbal lexical items. The evidence from this patient, along with similar evidence from the literature we reviewed, suggests that when patients present with a progressive aphasia characterized by anomia, Pick's disease should be considered as the probable diagnosis.

Face processing and name retrieval in an anomic aphasic: Names are stored separately from semantic information about familiar people

Recent models of face recognition have proposed that the names of familiar people are accessed from a lexical memory store that is distinct from the semantic memory store that holds information about such things as a familiar person's occupation and personality. Names are nevertheless retrieved via the semantic system. If such models are correct, then it should be possible for a patient to have full access to semantic information about familiar people while being unable to name many of them. We report this pattern in an anomic aphasic patient, EST, whose inability to recall the names of familiar people occurred in the context of a general word-finding problem. EST showed a preserved ability to access semantic information from familiar faces, voices, and spoken and written names and to process facial expressions, but he was unable to name many familiar faces. These findings are compatible with current models of face processing and challenge models which propose that names are stored alongside semantic information in a general-purpose long-term memory store.

Components of Stroop-like interference in picture naming.

The semantic interference effect observed in Stroop tasks and picture-word interference tasks might be due to the previous confounding of semantic similarity with task relevance (in the Stroop task) and with perceptual similarity (in the picture-word interference task). A picture-word variant of the Stroop task was devised in which the factors of task relevance and perceptual similarity were controlled. The distractor conditions allowed for the examination of four types of context effects. The results show that the overall Stroop-like interference effect can be decomposed into interference effects due to (1) a semantic relation between distractor and target, (2) the semantic relevance of the distractor word in the task at hand, (3) the presence of the distractor word in the response set, and (4) the mere presence of a word. Implications of these findings for the locus or loci of Stroop and picture-word interference effects are discussed. It is concluded that distractor words in Stroop-like naming tasks interfere mainly in the process of name retrieval.

The role of colour in categorial judgements.

Two experiments are reported that extend the findings of Ostergaard and Davidoff (1985) on the role of colour in object processing. Two types of categorial judgements were investigated from pictorial stimuli: size judgement and living/non-living classifications. The effect of real size on size judgements (Paivio, 1975) was replicated. It was found that colour did not affect either of the categorial judgements, but the facilitation occurring in object naming tasks was confirmed. It is argued that semantic judgements can precede name retrieval, that physical colour input does not enter the semantic system, and that the representation of object colour information in the semantic system may be largely verbal.

Sources of age differences in speed of processing.

3 experiments were conducted to study developmental change in the speed of cognitive processes. In Experiment 1, subjects ranging in age from 8 to 21 years were tested on a mental rotation task in which they judged whether pairs of letters presented at different orientations were identical or mirror images, and on a name retrieval task in which they judged if pairs of pictures were identical physically or had the same name. Increases with age in the speed of mental rotation and speed of name retrieval were both well described by exponential functions, and the rate of developmental change was comparable for the 2 tasks. Experiment 2 confirmed that age changes in rate of mental rotation are well described by an exponential function. Experiment 3 demonstrated, on a mental rotation task, a perfect correlation across conditions between children's mean response times and adults' mean response times for corresponding conditions. These results are interpreted as indicating that age differences in speed of processing are due, at least in part, to a central limiting mechanism that increases with age.

Developmental Changes in the Cognitive Correlates of Reading Ability and the Developmental Lag Hypothesis

GROUPS OF thirdand fifth-grade children were administered tasks assessing receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, general name-retrieval ability, decoding skill, wordrecognition speed, and the ability to use context to speed word recognition. All of the tasks were significantly related to reading achievement except name retrieval in the third-grade sample. Reading ability in the third-grade children was most strongly related to vocabulary and word-recognition speed, whereas the strongest predictors of reading ability in the fifthgrade sample were vocabulary and decoding skill. The skilled third-grade readers and less skilled fifth-grade readers were approximately matched on overall reading level, providing an opportunity to test a developmental lag model of individual differences in reading skill. The cognitive profiles of these two groups were very similar. Although the traditional domain of developmental lag models has been dyslexia (i.e., severe reading disability), it is argued that this type of model is actually more helpful as an aid to understanding the normal achievement variations observed among nondyslexic children.

On the origin of semantic errors in naming: Evidence from the case of a global aphasic

Abstract The case of a globally aphasic patient (JCU) is reported. Four experiments are described. In the first, she was able to make correct non-verbal semantic judgements about pictures. In naming, correct phonemic cues elicited correct names for 49% of the pictures. Incorrect cues elicited a variety of errors; semantic errors were the most frequent, and they were not often rejected by JCU saying “no” immediately afterwards. Unrelated word paraphasias were usually rejected. Cued word reading was no worse than naming but there were many fewer semantic errors. In a comprehension task, JCU was able to judge that correct names were correct, and that unrelated names were inappropriate, but she judged more than 50% of semantic co-ordinates of the correct names to be correct. The nature of the processes responsible for her semantic errors is discussed, and it is argued that JCU is using incomplete semantic information in name retrieval and word comprehension, but that she does not have a deficit specific to an...