ABSTRACT
The work reviewed in Chapter 3 showed that failure to recall proper names is a common error reported in diary studies of cognitive failures in everyday life. Difficulty in recall of proper names was commonly reported by elderly people in a questionnaire study of everyday memory ability (Cohen and Faulkner, 1984). Production of a proper name on seeing a familiar face or building is, of course, only one aspect of proper name processing. We are also able to recall the appropriate semantic information about a familiar person or building on seeing a printed or written proper name or on hearing the spoken name. Proper names can therefore form the input to cognitive processing as well as be the product of it. Of course, the same distinction between input and output applies to common as well as proper names. In short, we can speak about objects and events in the world as well as read and understand speech. In this chapter we will focus on the processing of proper names from print or sound, and thus concern ourselves principally with input rather than output. We have already discussed some aspects of the recognition of printed words and proper names in Chapter 3, in particular work on repetition and semantic priming. We begin by examining the development of proper name processing in infancy, before going on to discuss information-processing models of adult processing of people’s names and the factors which affect recognition of heard and seen names.
