Age of acquisition effects in picture naming: evidence for a lexical-semantic competition hypothesis.
In many tasks the effects of frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) on reaction latencies are similar in size. However, in picture naming the AoA-effect is often significantly larger than expected on the basis of the frequency-effect. Previous explanations of this frequency-independent AoA-effect have attributed it to the organisation of the semantic system or to the way phonological word forms are stored in the mental lexicon. Using a semantic blocking paradigm, we show that semantic context effects on naming latencies are more pronounced for late-acquired than for early-acquired words. This interaction between AoA and naming context is likely to arise during lexical-semantic encoding, which we put forward as the locus for the frequency-independent AoA-effect.
Belke
Eva
E
Department of Psychology, School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK. e.belke@bham.ac.uk
Brysbaert
Marc
M
Meyer
Antje S
AS
Ghyselinck
Mandy
M
D000367:Age Factors; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary