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Article published In:
Written Language & Literacy
Vol. 22:1 (2019) ► pp.95–130

Effects of non-native word shapes in the recognition and recall of medicine names

| CBIOS – Universidade Lusófona’s Research Center for Biosciences and Health Technologies
| Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
| University of Lisbon
| University of Lisbon
| University of Lisbon

Mistakes involving medicine brand names may lead to serious medication errors and even patients’ death. We tested the effect of medicine brand names shape – native vs. non-native spelling – in two groups of Portuguese speaking subjects: (i) pharmacy clients (older and less educated); (ii) graduate students (younger and more educated). We run a recognition task and an immediate recall task, testing three groups of names with: (1) non-native graphemes, (2) non-native grapho-/phonotactics, (3) native patterns. Results showed that names with non-native properties, especially non-native graphemes, were recalled significantly worse. Non-native patterns had a null effect in the recognition task, possibly due to a facilitating effect of the odd, non-native feature, compensating for the extra demand imposed by non-native patterns on processing. Less educated, older participants consistently performed significantly worse than more educated, younger subjects across experiments. The results suggest the pertinence of adapting medicine names to the language of target users.

Keywords: non-native spelling, age and education, word recognition, word recall, medicine names, drug names
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Effects of the shape of words in word recall and word recognition
    • 2.2Effects of education and age in memorizing words
    • 2.3Research on the adequacy of medicine brand names
    • 2.4Portuguese writing conventions
    • 2.5Research questions and hypotheses
  • 3.Experiment 1 – Recognition task
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Previous knowledge of the names by participants
      • 3.1.3Materials
      • 3.1.4Procedure
      • 3.1.5Data coding and analysis
    • 3.2Results
  • 4.Experiment 2 – Immediate recall using orthographic transcription
    • 4.1Method
      • 4.1.1Participants
      • 4.1.2Materials
      • 4.1.3Procedure
      • 4.1.4Data coding and analysis
    • 4.2Results
  • 5.General discussion
  • References
Published online: 20 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00021.pir
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