Age of acquisition, word frequency, and picture–word interference

Abstract

In two experiments participants named pictures superimposed with unrelated words. The age of acquisition (AoA) of the picture names was manipulated. Additionally, the word frequency (WF, Experiment 1) or AoA (Experiment 2) of the interfering distractor words was manipulated. Early-acquired pictures were named faster than their late-acquired counterparts. Both WF and AoA modulated the degree of interference from the irrelevant word; low-frequency and late-acquired words produced most interference. In neither case did the WF or AoA of the distractor word interact with the AoA of the picture. The results show that in the context of word processing both WF and AoA have similar effects.

Keywords:

• Age of acquisition
• AoA
• Frequency
• Picture-word interference
• Picture naming

Acknowledgments

We thank Marc Brysbaert, Mike Cortese and another anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.