Imageability and category-specificity

Author(s): Moss, H. E.

Journal/Book: Cognitive Neuropsychol. 1997; 14: 27 Church Rd, Hove, East Sussex, England BN3 2FA. Psychology Press. 293-318.

Abstract: In this paper, we report the case of DrO, a patient who has been described as having a selective problem understanding the meaning of abstract words in the auditory modality. We test this claim by means of an on-line semantic priming task, comparing the automatic activation of semantic information in both the auditory and visual modalities. Although DrO showed priming for both abstract and concrete words in the visual modality, there was only priming for concrete words in the auditory modality. However, DrO's reaction times (RTs) and errors in the auditory priming study suggested that he might have a generalised auditory processing impairment. We tested and confirmed this hypothesis in a series of further studies. We propose an account of why a general auditory processing impairment would affect abstract words more than concrete words by appealing to an auditory analogue of Plaut and Shallice's (1993) recent computational model of deep dyslexia.

Note: Article Tyler LK, Univ London Birkbeck Coll, Dept Psychol, Ctr Speech & Language, Malet St, London, ENGLAND

Keyword(s): SEMANTIC MEMORY; LEXICAL ACCESS; ABSTRACT WORDS; DEEP DYSLEXIA; APHASIA; COMPREHENSION; INFORMATION; CONCRETE; PATIENT; IMPAIRMENTS

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