Strategies to resolve recall failures for proper names: New data.

Strategies to resolve recall failures for proper names: New data.
Mem Cognit. 2020 Jun 08;:
Authors: Brédart S, Geurten M
Abstract
Personal names are particularly susceptible to retrieval failures. Studies describing people's spontaneous strategies for resolving such failures have indicated that people frequently search for semantic or contextual information about the target person. However, previous experimental studies have shown that, while providing phonological information may help resolve a name-recall failure, by contrast, providing semantic information is usually not helpful. In the first study, in order to reduce a bias present in previous studies of spontaneous strategies, explicit instructions were given to participants, specifying that the focus of the study was on a voluntary search for information. Participants reported strategically searching for semantic/contextual strategies when they tried to resolve a name-retrieval failure more often than they reported searching for phonological/orthographic information. In addition, phonological/orthographic strategies were perceived as more difficult than semantic/contextual strategies. In a second experiment, we investigated whether retrieving phonological information by oneself is objectively difficult in a face-naming task: in the event of retrieval failure, participants were instructed to search for phonological information in some trials and for semantic information in oth...

Source: Memory and Cognition - June 11, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Tags: Mem Cognit Source Type: research