Proper Names and Common Nouns Dissociation: Exploring Differences in Linguistic Processing and Memory Retrieval

Abstract

Philosophy and linguistics suggest that proper names and common nouns are dissociate lexicosemantic categories. Evidence from psychology and neuropsychology honours this distinction as it provides indications that they may activate different neuro-functional systems. Nevertheless, there are still some lacks in the literature that must be filled. There are mixed findings about the temporal pole involvement in proper names retrieval. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no study has yet investigated the dissociation of proper names vs. common nouns in light of the welldocumented oscillatory dissociation of episodic theta and semantic alpha as reflecting the distinct declarative memory requirements. Besides, no study has explored the brain-based dissociation between the two categories using images as a stimulus. Our naming task showed that there is a dissociation in the retrieval of proper names being more demanding and source-consuming compared to common nouns. Also, oscillations patterns revealed a more pronounced evoked theta power in the proper names retrieval condition in comparison to the common nouns condition. For the alpha wave, we did not obtain differences between the categories. These results sustain the claim of the existence of functionally and anatomically distinct retrieval pathways for the categories of proper and common names, and thus, a dissociation between proper names and common nouns.