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Naming famous people through face and voice: a normative study

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Abstract

Objectives

Within the large topic of naming disorders, an important and separated chapter belongs to proper names. Defects of proper naming could be a selective linguistic problem. Sometimes, it includes names belonging to various kinds of semantically unique entities, but other times, it has been observed for famous people proper names only. According to Bruce and Young’s model, different stages allow to recognize, identify, and name famous people from their faces and voices, subsuming different anatomical pathways, both in right temporal lobe, and their different efficiency in this task. The present study aimed to report the normative data concerning the naming of the same famous people from voice and face.

Subjects and methods

One hundred fifty-three normal subjects underwent a test in which they were requested to name famous people from their face and from their voice. The stimuli belonged to the previously published Famous People Recognition Battery.

Results

The mean percentage score on naming from face was 84.42 ± 12.03% (range 55.26–100%) and the mean percentage score on naming from voice was 66.04 ± 16.81% (range 28.13–100%). The difference observed in performance by face and by voice resulted significant (t|153 = 15.973; p < 0.001). Regression analyses showed that the percentage score obtained on naming from faces was predicted by education, whereas naming from voice was predicted by education and gender.

Discussion

Naming from voice is more difficult than from face, confirming a different difficulty of the two tasks. Education showed high predicting value for faces and less for voices, whereas gender contributed to predict results only for voices.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Neurology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, L.go A. Gemelli, 1, 00168, Rome, Italy

    Chiara Piccininni, Guido Gainotti & Camillo Marra

  2. Laboratory of Clinical and Behavioural Neurology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

    Guido Gainotti & Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo

  3. Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy

    Simona Luzzi

  4. Department of Psychology, Centre for Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Costanza Papagno

  5. CeRiN and CIMeC, University of Trento, 38068, Rovereto, Italy

    Costanza Papagno

  6. Department of Psychology, University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Caserta, Italy

    Luigi Trojano

  7. ICS Maugeri, IRCCS, Telese Terme, Italy

    Luigi Trojano & Antonia Ferrara

  8. Institute of Neurology, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario “Agostino Gemelli”, Rome, Italy

    Davide Quaranta

Authors
  1. Chiara Piccininni
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  2. Guido Gainotti
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Correspondence to Chiara Piccininni.

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The present study involved research on healthy subjects who provided their informed consent to participate.

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Piccininni, C., Gainotti, G., Carlesimo, G.A. et al. Naming famous people through face and voice: a normative study. Neurol Sci 41, 1859–1864 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-020-04272-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-020-04272-1

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