Categorization of familiar persons from their names

It was tested whether or not the orthographic appearance of familiar persons’ names could interfere in semantic decisions about these persons’ identity. Subjects had to categorize famous persons, whose names served as stimuli, according to their membership of the French‐ or Dutch‐speaking community of Belgium. French‐speaking persons with French‐Walloon names (congruent condition) and French‐speaking persons with Dutch‐Flemish names (non‐congruent condition) served as target items. Mean reaction times were longer in the non‐congruent condition than in the congruent one. However, this was the case only for the less famous persons (Expt 1). The presence of an interaction between the degree of familiarity and the occurrence of the interference is interpreted in terms of relative time necessary to access identity‐specific semantic codes on one hand and to derive information from the appearance of names on the other hand. Experiment 2 was performed to ensure that the sets of stimuli used were equivalent with regard to familiarity. Results from Expt 3 support the mentioned hypothesis: the interference was prevented by using a technique known to speed up access to the identity‐specific semantic codes

Categorization · Cognitive psychology · Flemish · Identity (music) · Linguistics · Authorship Attribution and Profiling · Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Race as a visual feature

  Daniel T Levin•Journal of Experimental…•2000

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