Language Research Laboratory, Unidade Neurológica de Investigação Clínica (UNIC), Lisbon Faculty of Medicine, IMM, Hospital de Sta Maria, 1649-028, Lisbon, Portugal.
Neurol Sci. 2010 Jun;31(3):269-76. doi: 10.1007/s10072-009-0176-x. Epub 2009 Nov 11.
Tests of famous faces are used to study language and memory. Yet, the effect of stimulus properties on performance has not been fully investigated. To identify factors influencing proper name retrieval and to probe stimulus-specific parameters within proper name lexicon, we analysed the results obtained by 300 healthy participants on a test of famous faces that includes 74 personalities. A factor analysis yielded five main factors that were characterized by language (national or foreign names), epoch of peak popularity (current, recent or past) and occupation (politicians, entertainment and sports) of the personalities. Multiple regression analysis showed that participants' education, age and gender accounted for 10-32% of the variance in factor scores. These results indicate that there are variables of the stimulus and participants' that must be taken into account in proper name testing and in designing tests aimed to differentiate age-associated difficulties from cognitive decline.
面孔测试被用于研究语言和记忆。然而，刺激特性对表现的影响尚未得到充分研究。为了确定影响专有名词检索的因素，并探究专有名词词汇内的刺激特异性参数，我们分析了 300 名健康参与者在一项包含 74 个人物的著名面孔测试中获得的结果。因素分析产生了五个主要因素，这些因素的特征是语言（本国或外国名字）、人物的巅峰流行时期（当前、最近或过去）和职业（政治家、娱乐和体育）。多元回归分析表明，参与者的教育、年龄和性别占因子得分方差的 10-32%。这些结果表明，在专有名词测试和设计旨在区分与年龄相关的困难与认知能力下降的测试时，必须考虑刺激和参与者的变量。
