In:
Written Language and Literacy, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Vol. 22, No. 1 ( 2019-11-20), p. 95-130
Abstract:
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.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1387-6732
,
1570-6001
DOI:
10.1075/wll.00021.pir
Language:
English
Publisher:
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Publication Date:
2019
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2038989-9
SSG:
7,11
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