Do Words Really Interfere in Naming Pictures

EHRI, LINNEA C. DO Words Really Interfere in Naming Pictures? CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 502-505. Children and adult reader.s were asked to label 2 sets of pictures, 1 drawti with either eorrect word labels or diserepaiit labels, and the other with no labels (control condition). Results supported previous conclusions that discrepant words interfere with picture-naming speed and congruent words enhance speed. Interference was evident in all subjects except a group of below-average second-grade readers, apparently because it took them as long to recognize the words as to name the pictures. In a recent issue of Child Development, Rosinski, Golinkoff, and Kukish (1975) describe a most interesting phenomenon evident in the performances of second- as well a.s sixth-grade readers and adults, a phenomenon resembling the Stroop color-word interference effect (Stroop 1935). In this study, stibjects were asked to label drawings of 20 familiar objects arranged in five rows on a sheet of paper. Printed in the middle of each object was a word. In the 100% congruence condition, idl the words correctly labeled the pictures. In the 0% congruence condition, none of the words matched. The subjects were told to ignore the words as they named the pictures. The time taken to identify all 20 pictures was recorded. Results revealed that it took subjects much longer to label pictures with discrepant labels than with correct labels. Furthermore, differencjes between the discrepant and congruent conditions were greater among younger than older subjects. In a second experiment, another condition was added, one in which nonsense trigrams rhyming with the correct labels served as the printed distractors. Findings indicated that subjects took less time to label pictures with trigrams than pictures with discrepant: words, but they took substantially longer in the trigram condition than in the congrttent word condition. Rosinski et al. conclude that picturelabeling behavior is influenced by the presence of printed words and that the presence of discrepant words has the effect of interfering with pieturelabeling performance, especially among younger subjects.