Priming Effects in Experiment 1

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could imply that concept and word have strong influences on children‟s word selection. Unfamiliar words seem to be affected easier and thus have a higher frequency of errors. This may be related to the assumptions that through repetitive practice, words could gain stronger linking among object, concept, and word.

Unfamiliar words were used less than familiar ones. Thus, the naming of unfamiliar words would be interfered easier. This finding was consistent with Gershkoff-Stowe et al. (2006) as well, which may imply that this should be a universal phenomenon.

4.3 Priming Effects in Experiment 1

According to Gershkoff-Stowe et al. (2006), the design was to compare children‟s naming when they were primed (children in the set A provided A target prime answers) versus when they were not primed (children in the set A provided B target prime (control) answers). To understand whether there are the same priming effects in Mandarin Children as in English children, (2) × (2) ANOVA test were adopted to examine the effects of tasks (set A/set B) and conditions

(familiar/unfamiliar) on children‟s object erroneous naming. In the four error types,

„extraneous‟ and „filler‟ are not affected by different tasks and conditions. However,

there is a main effect of condition on children‟s „target‟ error type. The ANOVA result is shown in the table 5.

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Table 5. The Effects of Conditions and Tasks on Children‟s „Target‟ Error Type

Source DF Type I SS Mean Square F Value Pr > F children‟s „target‟ error naming. The shape similarity with the objects should have the same effects on children‟s naming. However, different conditions (familiar or unfamiliar) seem to have significantly different effects on children‟s „target‟ error naming (SS=3.68, MS=3.68, F(1,18)=5.88, p=0.0260<0.05), and there was an interaction effect (SS=9.22, MS=9.22, F(1,18)=14.73, p=0.0012<0.05). Children in the unfamiliar condition were susceptible to be influenced by perceptually similar target prime pictures easier. This result was not consistent with Gershkoff-Stowe et al‟s (2006) study. Their findings showed that familiarity should not cause children to have different reactions to target priming pictures. Thus, they concluded that the underlying mechanisms among category errors, pragmatic errors, and retrieval errors should be the same. Nevertheless, in Mandarin children, the situation appears to be another case. Children made less overextension errors from the effect of target prime

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pictures previously shown to them in familiar condition. On the contrary, it is much easier for children to make „target‟ error naming in the unfamiliar condition. This should be explained by two reasons. The first one is because of activation strengths.

Activation strengths will be stronger when the use frequency of a word is higher (Dapretto & Bjork, 2000). It is reasonable that familiar words have higher frequency of retrieval and practice in children‟s daily life. Thus, stronger strengths may make children have fewer possibilities to be affected by previously primed perceptually similar target pictures. The second reason may come from different types of languages.

Since Mandarin Chinese and English are two different languages and thus have different morphology, this may be the reason to lead to different results. Chinese words/compounds are often composed of two syllabic morphemes, which bring phonological and semantic information at the same time while English words are composed of letters, which often bring just phonological information (Mok, 2009;

Toyoda & Scrimgeour, 2009). And studies have shown that activation strengths would be stronger when the perceived thing is semantically/perceptually similar to the image in our concept (Huttenlocher & Kubicek, 1983; Martin, Weisberg & Saffran, 1989).

Thus, concept (semantic/perceptual) relations will fortify the strengths in people‟s mental lexicon. Thus, the characteristics of Mandarin Chinese morphology may cause words/compounds to be less vulnerable to be influenced than English because words

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in Mandarin mostly own information more than just phonology, which may let Chinese vocabularies have stronger strengths than English naturally. It is more difficult for Chinese words to be overextended because of its natural stronger strengths. Especially when the words are familiar, the strengths are double. Therefore,

conditions (familiar/unfamiliar) become a significant factor to affect children‟s

„target‟ error naming.

Although familiarity becomes a significant factor to influence children‟s error naming in Mandarin children, we do not want to neglect the effects of spreading activation mechanism on children‟s naming (Dell, 1986). In fact, it still could be used to explain children‟s three types of overextension errors because we could not deny the fact that even in the familiar condition, the frequency of „target‟ error naming (7.6%) was more than „filler‟ (4.5%) or „control‟ (3%). This means that the strengths of perceptually similar target prime pictures are still stronger than the other two.

Similarity indeed makes the target primes become a more powerful competitor to intervene children‟s word retrieval despite the fact that the power of this interference is not that strong as in English. Thus, we still want to agree that the underlying mechanisms among three types of overextension errors should be the same.

Regarding to the last kind of erroneous naming, i.e., „control‟, the results of ANOVA test are displayed in the table 6.

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Table 6. The Effects of Conditions and Tasks on Children‟s „Control‟ Error Type

Source DF Type I SS Mean Square F Value Pr > F Task (set A/ set B) 1 1.96 1.96 12.62 0.0023 Condition (Familiar/Unfamiliar) 1 0.73 0.73 4.68 0.0443 Task×Condition 1 0.87 0.87 5.61 0.0292

In this table, we could observe that both Task (SS=1.96, MS=1.96, F(1,18)=12.62, p=0.0023<0.05) and Condition (SS=0.73, MS=0.73, F(1,18)=4.68, p=0.0443<0.05)

had main effects on children‟s „control‟ naming. And there was an interaction effect of Task and Condition (SS=0.87, MS=0.87, F(1,18)=5.61, p=0.0292<0.05).

In fact, almost all the „control‟ naming data came from the same trail: trail 3 in experiment 1. Children mostly still replied qiu2 „ball‟ when they were primed by pin2guo3 „apple‟. In other trails, the „control‟ naming scarcely happened. This fact

leads to the result that Task became a significant factor to influence children‟s

„control‟ naming. Gershkoff-Stowe et al. (2006) mentioned that when labeling an

object, several related concepts will be activated at the same time, and the one which receives the strongest strength will win and be retrieved successfully. It appears that qiu2 „ball‟ is a strong competitor to affect children‟s naming when they saw a round

thing. This suggests that qiu2 „ball‟ in Mandarin should have stronger activation strengths among the competitors with round shape so that it has possibilities to overpower the target prime pictures in some cases. Besides, condition also plays a significant role in children‟s „control‟ naming as well. This is reasonable since

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familiarity will make the strengths become stronger so that the possibilities of other erroneous retrieval will decrease accordingly.

In this experiment, some facts were revealed. First, shape similarity indeed will fortify the strengths of the word to intervene children‟s word retrieval even though this kind of effect was lower for the familiar objects in Mandarin Chinese children.

Second, priming is a necessary factor to make children to give „target‟ error naming especially in the unfamiliar condition because the strengths for the unfamiliar objects should be weaker in children‟s mental lexicon. Third, word retrieval errors should not be totally affected by previously accessed words. Rather, concepts and words in our long term memory should play an important role. This is why there were many extraneous errors and why „control‟ error naming data almost completely came from children‟s labeling qiu2 „ball‟ to substitute for the things with round shape. From the data in our experiment, three types of error still could be explained by Dell‟s (1986) spreading activation model. Our finding is generally consistent with Gershkoff-Stowe et al‟s (2006) study.