Abstract
Background: Cognitive aging research, as well as cross-cultural research, often relies on pictorial stimuli to address how perceptions of common objects vary by population group. Objective: We investigate naming specificity – the degree of detail elicited for object labels – across age (younger-older) and culture (American-Chinese). Methods: Using latent class analysis techniques, we segregated picture-item responses into multiple specificity levels. The analysis was conducted for 260 pictures, across four groups of younger (aged 17–25 years) and older (aged 59–76 years) adults in the US and mainland China. Results: Overall, three naming specificity classes were supported. Age differences were modest compared to those across culture. In particular, Chinese groups showed far greater variation, naming more items both with high and with low specificity than age-matched American counterparts. Our results differed from prior studies using familiarity and latency measures. Moreover, approximately 28% of commonly-used picture items differed across all four groups. Conclusion: These results highlight the need to select appropriate pictorial stimuli for studies involving populations diverse in age and cultural background.