The scope of advance planning in written picture naming

Abstract

The present study focused on the issue of the scope of advance planning in written picture naming. In the first series of experiments, participants had to write down or to speak aloud two bare nouns from pictures presented side-by-side starting with the left one, whereas in the second series of experiments, participants had to produce noun phrases in written naming only. Multiple regression analyses were performed on the naming latencies. In the first type of regression analysis, certain characteristics corresponding to the two pictures (in first and in second position) and their names were introduced as independent variables. In the second type of analysis, the latencies required to name the pictures corresponding to the pairs individually were introduced as independent variables. Overall, the findings suggest that naming is initiated when the processing of the first target is fully complete whereas the processing that is undertaken on the second target is restricted to the structural/semantic levels, i.e., there is no access to name representations. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Antje Meyer, Martin Pickering and two anonymous reviewers for their very valuable comments on previous versions of the article.

Notes

¹As can be seen, the error rate was high but it is important to note that two names had to be produced spontaneously from pictures. In a previous study (Bonin et al., 2002) in which single names had to be produced from pictures, the error rate was around 15% in speaking and 14% in writing. Also, in a multiple regression study conducted in English, the error rate in single oral picture naming was around 17% (Barry et al., 1997). Given these error rates in single picture naming, it is not surprising that we obtained the current error rates when two names had to be produced form two pictures.

²It is important to note that the use of the PsyScope software did not permit the recording of handwriting movements and pause durations between words.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Bonin

Correspondence should be addressed to Patrick Bonin, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive (LAPSCO)/CNRS (UMR 6024), Université Blaise Pascal 34, avenue Carnot, 63037 Clermont-Ferrand, France. [email protected]