Why is a flamingo named as pelican and asparagus as celery? Understanding the relationship between targets and errors in a speeded picture naming task
(2024) Cognitive Neuropsychology — Vol. 41, n° 1-2, p. 18-50 (2024)
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WhyisaflamingonamedaspelicanandasparagusasceleryUnderstandingtherelationshipbetweentargetsanderrorsinaspeed.pdf
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- Authors
Lampe, Leonie F. 
Nickels, Lyndsey
- Abstract
- Speakers sometimes make word production errors, such as mistakenly saying pelican instead of flamingo. This study explored which properties of an error influence the likelihood of its selection over the target word. Analysing real-word errors in speeded picture naming, we investigated whether, relative to the target, naming errors were more typical representatives of the semantic category, were associated with more semantic features, and/or were semantically more closely related to the target than its near semantic neighbours were on average. Results indicated that naming errors tended to be more typical category representatives and possess more semantic features than the targets. Moreover, while not being the closest semantic neighbours, errors were largely near semantic neighbours of the targets. These findings suggest that typicality, number of semantic features, and semantic similarity govern activation levels in the production system, and we discuss possible mechanisms underlying these effects in the context of word production theories.
- Affiliations
School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany European Master's of Clinical Linguistics (EMCL+), Universities of Groningen, Groningen (The Netherlands), Potsdam (Germany), and Eastern Finland (Finland)
Citations
Lampe, L. F., Zarifyan, M., Hameau, S., & Nickels, L. (2024). Why is a flamingo named as pelican and asparagus as celery? Understanding the relationship between targets and errors in a speeded picture naming task. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 41(1-2), 18-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2024.2315822 (Original work published 2024)