Naming famous people through face and voice: a normative study

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.