I just ran into Helen Hunt
A week ago I was going to my advisor meeting. I walked into the room that it’s usually in, and found Doctor Helen Housley with a group of students. I apologized and asked her if she knew where my advisor, David Hunt, was. When I walked into the room, I told my friend Taylor:
“So I totally just walked in on Helen Hunt in the seminar room…”
He just gave me this look, and I realized that I said Helen Hunt instead of Helen Housley.
This was a production error that happened because Helen and Hunt were both on my mind, and easily accessed. Also, Helen Hunt is an actress, and my advising meeting was in the thatre building. Helen and Dave are both in the theatre department. It makes sense that I would also combine the words because Helen Hunt is related to theatre. Dave’s last name also starts with ‘H’ and I was obviously thinking about his name as well as Helen’s.
I did something similar with one of the job candidates for ELS this year. Her name was Heather Taylor, and I called her Elizabeth Taylor. The department chair teased me about it for weeks!
Never underestimate the power of lexical access. The semantic strength from memorized names like “Helen Hunt”, “Elizabeth Taylor”, or even “Osama bin Laden” can serve as powerful forces to say the wrong names in the presence of other priming/distracting forces!
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