Repetition priming of the recognition of familiar proper names

Three experiments examined repetition priming of the recognition of printed proper names of familiar people by the prior exposure of those names in th eir correct form or with their letters re-arranged as anagrams. Experiment 1 found that, compared with response times to previously unseen names, name familiarity decisions were made more rapidly if the subject had seen and i dentified the famous name in the pre-training stage, irrespective of whethe r they saw the intact name or an anagram. Priming was not demonstrated if t he name was not recognized in the pre-training stage. The results of Experi ment 2 suggested that if anagrams were nor solved spontaneously in the pre- training stage, being prompted to their identity by the experimenter would not yield reliable priming at test, a result that reflected previous work u sing face stimuli (Brunas-Wagstaff, Young, & Ellis, 1992; Johnston, Barry & Williams, 1996). In Experiment 3, prompts were given for all names and ana grams presented at pre training. Subsequent priming was demonstrated only f or names identified spontaneously, which showed that, as with face recognit ion, it was the situation in which the prime was given that was critical in determining whether priming of name recognition occurred. The findings are used to develop proposed extensions of the Bruce and Young (1986) model su ch as that offered by Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990).