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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Name: Rob Ashwill
Master’s Thesis Defense Meeting
Date: Friday, February 14, 2020
Time: 3-5 PM
Location: J.S. Coon Building, Room 150
Advisor:
Daniel Spieler, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Thesis Committee Members:
Daniel Spieler, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Chris Hertzog, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Thackery Brown, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Title: FEATURAL DENSITY IN PICTURE NAMING AMONG COLLEGE AGE AND OLDER ADULTS
Abstract:
When naming pictures, speakers are slower to name pictures with multiple appropriate labels (e.g., couch/sofa) compared to pictures consistently given a single label. This increased naming time is generally seen as a reflection of the time needed to resolve competition between the competing labels. Older speakers show a greater influence of name agreement that could reflect a specific age-related increase in sensitivity to lexical competition when speaking. The present study examines speakers’ sensitivity to a more pervasive form of lexical competition.
Using normative data in which individuals report features associated with object concepts, it is possible to measure the extent to which concepts share features with other concepts. Pictures matched with concepts with high featural overlap with other concepts should show greater competition during naming than those matched to concepts with lower levels of featural overlap. Initial evidence in younger speakers is consistent with this prediction. Here, we conducted a set of experiments to replicate this result in younger speakers and test the prediction that older speakers will be more sensitive to variations in featural overlap than younger speakers. We observed a marginal negative relationship between featural overlap and response times if participants were not pre-exposed to stimuli. With pre-exposure we saw a significant negative effect of feature overlap and response times in both young and older adults. There was no clear differential effect of featural overlap on semantic competition for young and older adults.
