Competitors or Teammates

Abstract

Research has documented that proper names are more difficult to learn and remember than other types of words. Various causes of this difficulty have been proposed to better understand how proper names are represented in memory and the degree to which names compete with each other. In the retrieval of names, some studies show competition, whereas other studies find facilitation. During comprehension, names demonstrate competition by causing a Moses illusion: People erroneously answer invalid questions such as “How many animals did Moses take on the ark?”, failing to detect that Noah is the correct name for the question. Errors in both name retrieval and comprehension are more likely when the correct name and distractor name sound similar, share biographical characteristics, or have some visual resemblance. However, shared visual information has played a competitive role more consistently in name comprehension than retrieval, an asymmetry that remains to be investigated.

Keywords

proper names Moses illusion competition language

The ability to learn and remember proper names, particularly people’s names, is notoriously more difficult relative to other types of words (Brédart & Valentine, 1998; Cohen & Faulkner, 1986). It is more difficult to access a person’s name than other biographical facts about that person (Johnston & Bruce, 1990), a difficulty that remains even when the name and the fact overlap; it is easier to remember a person’s occupation as a baker than his name as Mr. Baker (McWeeny, Young, Hay, & Ellis, 1987). Names are also more likely to result in a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state, a frustrating inability to produce a known word (Burke, MacKay, Worthley, & Wade, 1991).

Causes Underlying the Difficulty of Name Retrieval

Names possess various features that make them difficult to retrieve.

Names are arbitrary and do not inherently possess meaning

Unlike other types of words, names are meaningless labels that do not reveal information about the person to whom they refer (Brédart & Valentine, 1998; Semenza, 2006). Consequently, multiple people can have the same name (David) but not necessarily share attributes (all people named David are not engineers), whereas objects (apple) are associated with properties common to every object with that label (round, edible, usually red or green). Related to this lack of shared meaning is the fact that names generally are not descriptive about a person’s visual characteristics (the name Charlie Brown contains a descriptor, brown, that is not informative about what the character looks like), which makes them easier to retrieve when they are (as in the case of Snow White, who had pale skin; Fogler & James, 2007).

Names do not have synonyms

Names are unique in that they cannot be substituted for another name (Brédart, 1993; Cohen & Faulkner, 1986); there is only one correct name to refer to the author of Macbeth (William Shakespeare). In contrast, when a particular object label cannot be retrieved, a synonym can often be used to mask the retrieval failure. For example, the sentence “I bought some fruit at the _____” could be completed with the words store, market, or shop.

Names contain multiple words

Excluding the names of some celebrities, such as Beyoncé, names consist of at least two components, a first name and a last name, whereas many objects are described using only one word. For names to be successfully retrieved, all of their sounds must be accessible. Because names possess more sounds by virtue of having multiple components, there are more sounds that need to be retrieved. Indeed, more retrieval failures occur when names contain three components (first, middle, and last name) than two components (Hanley & Chapman, 2008).

Names have a lower frequency of use than other words

Frequency of use influences access to all types of words, such that low-frequency words are produced more slowly and less accurately and are more susceptible to TOTs than high-frequency words. Even the most common names are used less frequently (Fogler & James, 2007) and contain more low-frequency sounds (Brennen, 1993) than most other types of words. Among names, less common names are harder to learn and recall than more common names (James & Fogler, 2007).

Related Names Can Hurt or Help Retrieval

In some contexts, names compete with one another for retrieval (Ferreira, Marful, & Bajo, 2014; Valentine, Brennen, & Brédart, 1996). For example, it takes longer to retrieve the names of individuals who are known by more than one name (e.g., an actor who is well known as a particular character; Stevenage & Lewis, 2005). Naming times are slower when naming multiple people from the same category (e.g., Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas, and Penelope Cruz, all of whom are famous actors) relative to people from different categories (Marful, Paolieri, & Bajo, 2014), suggesting that related names may interfere with one another. Other studies have demonstrated interference only when the referents of names share category as well as other associations (John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, both of whom are in the category of tennis players and also often competed against each other; Izaute & Bonin, 2006; Young, Ellis, Flude, McWeeny, & Hay, 1986), suggesting that associated names may be stronger competitors than categorically related names (Carson & Burton, 2001). Findings like these support the idea that names compete with each other, such that the related name suppresses the accessibility of the to-be-retrieved name.

However, both categorical and associated names have facilitated retrieval in other studies. Vitkovitch, Potton, Bakogianni, and Kinch (2006) found that fewer errors occurred in naming the person depicted in a picture (John Lennon) when an associated face (that of Paul McCartney) had been named three trials earlier, an effect that remained for categorical names (Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart). A similar result was observed by Cross and Burke (2004), whose related names were characters played by their associated actors (the actor Audrey Hepburn was paired with her character Eliza Doolittle). Participants produced the name of the character in response to a cued definition (“The flower girl from the musical My Fair Lady whom Prof. Higgins transforms into a fashionable lady presentable to society, Eli___ Do__”), then, after naming a filler picture and answering a filler definition, named a picture of the actor depicting this character. Prior production of the character name, relative to that of an unrelated character, reduced picture-naming errors. Rather than demonstrating competition, these results demonstrate that encountering a similar name benefits retrieval by activating shared information, which comes to mind more easily when accessed a second time.

Because names lack a common set of semantic attributes (e.g., the names of Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart do not overlap in obvious ways besides the fact that they both refer to men who are singers), their association may be too weak for them to function as competitors. Does having additional overlap strengthen their competitiveness? Generally, the answer is yes: Semantically related names of people who also share visual features, including similarity in facial features and other measures of physical appearance, are sometimes associated with more person-misnaming errors—that is, use of the wrong name to refer to a familiar person (Brédart & Dardenne, 2015; Griffin & Wangerman, 2013; but see Deffler, Fox, Ogle, & Rubin, 2016). Another type of overlap that increases misnaming errors is phonological (shared sounds); the names produced through misnaming errors are more likely to possess both semantic and phonological properties of the intended name (Brédart & Dardenne, 2015; Brédart & Valentine, 1992; Deffler et al., 2016). For example, phonological similarity, in the form of shared initial or final sounds between the names of siblings (whose names by definition share semantic attributes), increased the frequency with which parents used a sibling’s name instead of the intended name (Griffin & Wangerman, 2013).

However, encountering a name that is both semantically and phonologically related can also benefit, rather than interfere with, retrieval of the intended name with respect to TOTs. Oberle and James (2013) found that relative to an unrelated name, prior presentation of a related name (Tom Cruise) reduced the likelihood of TOTs and increased correct naming of a pictured person with the same first name and occupation (Tom Hanks). White, Abrams, and Frame (2013) showed a similar effect on TOT resolution (see Fig. 1 for an illustration of the procedure), such that TOTs were resolved more often following a question containing a related name with the same first name and occupation relative to an unrelated name. Furthermore, this result occurred even when only the first name, and not the occupation, was shared.

Fig. 1.

Procedure used in White, Abrams, and Frame (2013) to measure resolution of tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. Following the induction of TOTs with general knowledge questions, a subsequent question asked about a fact concerning a person with the same first name and occupation (Helen Mirren), a person with the same first name but a different occupation (Helen Keller), or an unrelated person (Martha Stewart). TOT resolution was measured as successful retrieval of the correct name (Helen Hunt) after the second presentation of the general knowledge question.

In sum, names can be competitive for retrieval but only under some circumstances. Further research is needed to understand the conditions under which related names compete or facilitate retrieval of each other.

The Moses Illusion

Related names can increase susceptibility to the Moses illusion, a failure of name recognition during comprehension (Park & Reder, 2003). A Moses illusion occurs in response to a question such as “How many animals did Moses take on the ark?”, which people erroneously answer with “two” when the correct answer is “can’t say,” given that Noah, not Moses, sailed the ark (Erickson & Mattson, 1981).

Competition from distractor names

Explanations for the Moses illusion have focused on the semantic similarity between the correct name (Noah) and the distractor name (Moses), as their referents share many biographical features (both were male biblical figures associated with miracles). These shared features create competition between names so that the related distractor is harder to detect as anomalous (Reder & Kusbit, 1991). Indeed, more illusions occur when the referents of the correct name and the distractor name share many biographical features (Noah and Moses) relative to few features (Noah and Adam; van Jaarsveld, Dijkstra, & Hermans, 1997; van Oostendorp & de Mul, 1990). Furthermore, the presentation of factors that disambiguate the two names, such as a relevant fact about the correct name (“Noah took two animals of each kind on the ark”; Reder & Kusbit, 1991) or a question that highlights a unique fact about the distractor name (“What sea did Moses part?”; Kamas, Reder, & Ayers, 1996), can reduce susceptibility to the illusion. Changing the focus of the question and making the answer reliant on processing the distractor (“It was Moses who took two animals of each kind on the ark—true or false?”) also reduces the likelihood of experiencing an illusion (Brédart & Modolo, 1988).

Semantic overlap is not the entire story

Other factors reduce susceptibility to the illusion without emphasizing semantic information about either the correct name or the distractor name. Presenting the distractor name in uppercase letters (“MOSES”) draws more attention to it, resulting in greater detection of the error (Kamas et al., 1996). Low processing fluency of text has been linked with decreased Moses illusions. For example, presenting an illusion question in a difficult-to-read font, compared with an easy-to-read font, produces fewer illusions (Song & Schwarz, 2008), presumably because a challenging font reduces the fluency of reading the text. This makes the text seem less familiar and initiates greater scrutiny of it, improving detection of the incorrect information. Consistent with this interpretation, a cue hinting that an error might exist can also trigger a more critical examination of the question: Exposure to a fishy odor increases suspicion of the context (i.e., it makes participants find the situation “fishy”), which in turn makes participants more likely to detect errors in Moses illusion questions compared with no odor exposure (Lee, Kim, & Schwarz, 2015).

Other types of overlap—specifically, shared phonological features—can increase susceptibility to the Moses illusion independent of semantic overlap, a phenomenon termed the Armstrong illusion. Distractor names (Louis Armstrong, musician) with the same last name as the correct name (Neil Armstrong, astronaut) were more likely to be overlooked in answering the question “What was the famous line uttered by Louis Armstrong when he first set foot on the moon?” (Shafto & MacKay, 2000). Although the referents of the correct name and the distractor name did not share any biographical features, people noticed the error in the question less often than they did when the distractor name had no overlap with the correct name. Furthermore, phonological overlap is additive with semantic overlap: When distractor names have both kinds of overlap (as in the case of Lyndon Johnson and Andrew Johnson, presidents with the same last name), a mega-Moses illusion occurs, such that there is greater susceptibility to the illusion than when the distractor name overlaps only in sound (Samuel Johnson) or meaning (Theodore Roosevelt). Shafto and MacKay proposed a theoretical explanation whereby the Moses illusion results from a convergence of shared sources, which allows the distractor name to activate all of the related information about the correct name. Therefore, the more sources of overlap, the more likely the distractor will be miscomprehended as the correct name.

Visual Features: A New Source of Competition in the Moses Illusion

Davis and Abrams (2016) investigated the role of visual information in the form of facial features in the Moses illusion, a novel source of overlap that is critical for recognizing and distinguishing people. Even in a task that does not require visual characteristics to be identified, such as reading, a name can serve as a cue to access the associated person’s facial features (MacKay & Burke, 1991). Davis and Abrams used Moses illusion questions (“Which movie has ______ playing a ballet dancer who slowly loses her mind?”) in which the correct name (Natalie Portman, actor) was replaced with a semantic distractor name of a person who was visually similar because of shared facial features (Keira Knightley, actor), a semantic distractor name of a person who was visually dissimilar because of a lack of shared facial features (Amy Adams, actor), or an unrelated name (Maria Sharapova, athlete). Using a multiple-choice recognition test following each question, susceptibility to the illusion was computed in two ways: first, participants’ selection of the “can’t say” answer, which indicates correct detection of the illusion, and second, participants’ selection of the answer that would have been true if the correct name had been present in the question (Black Swan), which is a Moses illusion response.

Figure 2 displays the results, which show that in combination with semantic overlap, visual overlap decreased “can’t say” responses and increased Moses illusion responses. Furthermore, brief presentation of a picture prior to the question, either of the correct person or of the visually similar distractor, reduced susceptibility to the illusion. The authors’ explanation was that presenting a picture of a person highlights his or her unique facial features, which helps to distinguish the correct name from the distractor name and subsequently emphasizes the incompatibility between the distractor name and the information in the question. These findings extend our knowledge about convergent sources of information leading to the Moses illusion, showing that facial features, which can be shared by multiple people, offer an additional path by which names can become competitors (see Fig. 3 for a theoretical representation).

Fig. 2.

Mean percentage of “can’t say” responses and Moses illusion responses as a function of distractor name (Davis & Abrams, 2016, Experiment 1). Greater susceptibility to the illusion for visually similar distractors is evidenced by fewer “can’t say” responses and more Moses illusion responses. Bars represent ±1 SE.

Fig. 3.

In the Moses illusion, biographical information contained in the question (here, that the person referred to is an actor who played a ballet dancer) transmits activation (green arrows) to the correct name (Natalie Portman). Because both distractor names are also names of actors, the act of reading either distractor name (Keira Knightley or Amy Adams) leads to the processing of biographical features that are shared with the correct name, which sends additional activation (blue arrows) through the shared information to the correct name and causes a Moses illusion compared to an unrelated distractor (Maria Sharapova). However, compared to a visually dissimilar distractor (Amy Adams), a visually similar distractor (Keira Knightley) shares facial features (brown eyes, dark hair) with the correct name, sending even more activation (purple arrows) to Natalie Portman and increasing the likelihood of the Moses illusion.

Conclusion

In this article, we have documented experimental evidence for the well-known difficulty in retrieving proper names and reviewed the literature to determine whether this difficulty arises in part from competition invoked by other names. The degree to which the retrieval of names is susceptible to competition depends on experimental methodologies and types of overlap, suggesting that names are not uniformly competitive for retrieval and that retrieval can even benefit from the presentation of related names in some circumstances. More consistent findings of competition occur in the Moses illusion, in which encountering a related distractor name results in a miscomprehension error. In general, the factors that increase difficulties in both name retrieval and comprehension are similar, with more errors occurring when the intended and intruding names sound similar, refer to people who share biographical characteristics, or have some visual resemblance. However, shared visual information seems to be particularly competitive in name comprehension, and the increased susceptibility to Moses illusions for distractors that look similar to the correct name supports a theory whereby visual concepts as well as other person-specific information can work interactively, suggesting that visual information may be important for processing proper names more generally. Further research is needed to explore why visual overlap plays a more competitive role in name comprehension relative to retrieval and whether there are other asymmetries between comprehending and retrieving names.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Lori James and Katherine White for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

References

Abrams

Davis

D. K.

(2016). The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Who, what, and why. In Wright

H. H.

(Ed.), Cognition, language, and aging (pp. 13–53). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing. A chapter that discusses the retrieval failure for which names are notorious, TOTs, and reviews factors that affect their incidence and resolution.

Brédart

(2016). Names and cognitive psychology. In Hough

(Ed.), The Oxford handbook of names and naming (pp. 476–487). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. A chapter that describes evidence for proper names’ increased retrieval difficulties compared to object names and reviews prominent, detailed explanations to account for these difficulties.

Davis

D. K.

Abrams

(2016). (See References). Two experiments that investigated how visual features play a role in both increasing and reducing the Moses illusion.

Semenza

(2009). The neuropsychology of proper names. Mind & Language, 24, 347–369. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2009.01366.x. An article that shows how neuropsychological findings have been used to better understand the processing of proper names.

Shafto

MacKay

D. G.

(2000). (See References). The first article to demonstrate that phonological similarity increases Moses illusions and present a new theoretical explanation.

Brédart

(1993). Retrieval failures in face naming. Memory, 1, 351–366. doi:10.1080/09658219308258243

Brédart

Dardenne

(2015). Similarities between the target and the intruder in naturally occurring repeated person naming errors. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 1474. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01474

Brédart

Modolo

(1988). Moses strikes again: Focalization effect on a semantic illusion. Acta Psychologica, 67, 135–144. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(88)90009-1

Brédart

Valentine

(1992). From Monroe to Moreau: An analysis of face naming errors. Cognition, 45, 187–223. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(92)90017-C

10.

Brédart

Valentine

(1998). Descriptiveness and proper name retrieval. Memory, 6, 199–206. doi:10.1080/741942072

11.

Brennen

(1993). The difficulty with recalling people’s names: The plausible phonology hypothesis. Memory, 1, 409–431. doi:10.1080/09658219308258246

12.

Burke

D. M.

MacKay

D. G.

Worthley

J. S.

Wade

(1991). On the tip of the tongue: What causes word finding failures in young and older adults? Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 542–579. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(91)90026-G

13.

Carson

D. R.

Burton

A. M.

(2001). Semantic priming of person recognition: Categorial priming may be a weaker form of the associative priming effect. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A, 1155–1179. doi:10.1080/02724980143000091

14.

Cohen

Faulkner

(1986). Memory for proper names: Age differences in retrieval. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 187–197. doi:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1986.tb01010.x

15.

Cross

E. S.

Burke

D. M.

(2004). Do alternative names block young and older adults’ retrieval of proper names? Brain & Language, 89, 174–181. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00363-8

16.

Davis

D. K.

Abrams

(2016). Here’s looking at you: Visual similarity exacerbates the Moses illusion for semantically similar celebrities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42, 75–90. doi:10.1037/xlm0000144

17.

Deffler

S. A.

Fox

Ogle

C. M.

Rubin

D. C.

(2016). All my children: The roles of semantic category and phonetic similarity in the misnaming of familiar individuals. Memory & Cognition, 44, 989–999. doi:10.3758/s13421-016-0613-z

18.

Erickson

T. D.

Mattson

M. E.

(1981). From words to meaning: A semantic illusion. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 540–551. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(81)90165-1

19.

Ferreira

C. S.

Marful

Bajo

(2014). Interference resolution in face perception and name retrieval. Acta Psychologica, 153, 120–128. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00523

20.

Fogler

K. A.

James

L. E.

(2007). Charlie Brown versus Snow White: The effects of descriptiveness on young and older adults’ retrieval of proper names. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 62B, 201–207. doi:10.1093/geronb/62.4.P201

21.

Griffin

Z. M.

Wangerman

(2013). Parents accidentally substitute similar sounding sibling names more often than dissimilar names. PLoS ONE, 8, e84444. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0084444

22.

Hanley

Chapman

(2008). Partial knowledge in a tip-of-the-tongue state about two- and three-word proper names. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 156–160. doi:10.3758/PBR.15.1.156

23.

Izaute

Bonin

(2006). Retrieval of names in face and object naming in an interference study. Memory, 14, 400–414. doi:10.1080/09658210500419966

24.

James

L. E.

Fogler

K. A.

(2007). Meeting Mr. Davis vs Mr. Davin: Effects of name frequency on learning proper names in young and older adults. Memory, 15, 366–374. doi:10.1080/09658210701307077

25.

Johnston

R. A.

Bruce

(1990). Lost properties? Retrieval differences between name codes and semantic codes for familiar people. Psychological Research, 52, 62–67. doi:10.1007/bf00867213

26.

Kamas

Reder

L. M.

Ayers

(1996). Partial matching in the Moses illusion: Response bias not sensitivity. Memory & Cognition, 24, 687–699. doi:10.3758/BF03201094

27.

Lee

D. S.

Kim

Schwarz

(2015). Something smells fishy: Olfactory suspicion cues improve performance on the Moses illusion and Wason rule discovery task. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 59, 47–50. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2015.03.006

28.

MacKay

Burke

(1991). Learning and retrieval of names versus other descriptors of people: New theory and data. Unpublished paper presented at the International Conference on Memory.

29.

Marful

Paolieri

Bajo

M. T.

(2014). Is naming faces different from naming objects? Semantic interference in a face-and object-naming task. Memory & Cognition, 42, 525–537. doi:10.3758/s13421-013-0376-8

30.

McWeeny

K. H.

Young

A. W.

Hay

D. C.

Ellis

A. W.

(1987). Putting names to faces. British Journal of Psychology, 78, 143–149. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1987.tb02235.x

31.

Oberle

James

L. E.

(2013). Semantically- and phonologically-related primes improve name retrieval in young and older adults. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28, 1378–1393. doi:10.1080/01690965.2012.685481

32.

Park

Reder

L. M.

(2003). Moses illusion. In Pohl

R. F.

(Ed.), Cognitive illusions (pp. 275–292). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

33.

Reder

L. M.

Kusbit

G. W.

(1991). Locus of the Moses illusion: Imperfect encoding, retrieval, or match? Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 385–406. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(91)90013-A

34.

Semenza

(2006). Retrieval pathways for common and proper names. Cortex, 42, 884–891. doi:10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70432-5

35.

Shafto

M. A.

MacKay

D. M.

(2000). The Moses, mega-Moses, and Armstrong illusions: Integrating language comprehension and semantic memory. Psychological Science, 11, 372–378. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00273

36.

Song

Schwarz

(2008). Fluency and the detection of misleading questions: Low processing fluency attenuates the Moses illusion. Social Cognition, 26, 791–799. doi:10.1521/soco.2008.26.6.791

37.

Stevenage

S. V.

Lewis

H. G.

(2005). By what name should I call thee? The consequences of having multiple names. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 1447–1461. doi:10.1080/02724980443000692

38.

Valentine

Brennen

Brédart

(1996). The cognitive psychology of proper names: On the importance of being Ernest. London, England: Routledge.

39.

van Jaarsveld

H. J.

Dijkstra

Hermans

. (1997). The detection of semantic illusions: Task-specific effects for similarity and position of distorted terms. Psychological Research, 59, 219–230. doi:10.1007/BF00439299

40.

van Oostendorp

de Mul

. (1990). Moses beats Adam: A semantic relatedness effect on a semantic illusion. Acta Psychologica, 74, 35–46. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(90)90033-C

41.

Vitkovitch

Potton

Bakogianni

Kinch

(2006). Will Julia Roberts harm Nicole Kidman? Semantic priming effects during face naming. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 1134–1152. doi:10.1080/02724980543000178

42.

White

K. K.

Abrams

Frame

E. A.

(2013). Semantic category moderates phonological priming of proper name retrieval during tip-of-the-tongue states. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28, 561–576. doi:10.1080/01690965.2012.658408

43.

Young

A. W.

Ellis

A. W.

Flude

B. M.

McWeeny

K. H.

Hay

D. C.

(1986). Face–name interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 12, 466–475. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.12.4.466