Sannah Quarban

• BSc Speech and Language Sciences
• Does hearing a word affect word retrieval and production?

Word retrieval is used daily to select the correct word from a store of words in our brain, to label what we see or think. However, various factors can impact on our ability to select the right word.

The experiments in this study aimed to examine whether word retrieval processes are affected by:

a) seeing other items from the same category before they complete a comprehension task (e.g. lion>zebra>hyena)

b) making a decision about a word before saying the word

Results showed:

a) within a category, seeing the first item assisted comprehension of the second item. However, there were no significant changes across remaining items.

b) reaction times for naming category items is faster when a decision has been previously made.

Both sets of results contrast current contending accounts and suggest category items may share a node or set of nodes that activate and assist retrieval of other category items.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Supervisor: Prof David Howard