Calling a squirrel a squirrel, but a canoe a wigwam: a category-specific deficit for artefactual objects and body parts

Sacchett, C

doi:10.1093/neucas/4.4.399-ak

Cited by 49 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Category-specifi c deficits for living things usually, although not invariably, result from herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) infection. Although the reverse pattern has also been reported (better preserved knowledge of living things than other categories), this is rarer, and generally associated with aetiologies other than HSE (Hillis & Caramazza, 1991;Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992;Warrington & McCarthy, 1987).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

When Leopards Lose Their Spots: Knowledge of Visual Properties in Category-specific Deficits for Living Things

Moss¹,

Tyler²,

Jennings³

1997

Cognitive Neuropsychology

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several cases of category-specific semantic deficits for living things have now been reported, most of whom have a greater difficulty with knowledg e of visual properties of living things than with non-visual properties. This has motivated two different kinds of account of category-specific deficits for living things. One account is that the impairment for living things arises as a result of general damage to visual properties, and so it predicts that impairment for visual properties of living things will be accompanied by some degree of impairment for visual properties of other categories. The second account posits explicit category-based organisation of semantic memory, such that visual properties of living and non-living things are stored separately, and so can be independently impaired. We investigated the semantic impairment of a patient SE, who had received a diagnosis of herpes simplex encephalitis several years previously, resulting in a mild category-specific semantic deficit for living things. Both off-line and on-line tasks revealed that SE had a highly selective impairment for the visual properties of living things, with no sign of problems for the visual properties of non-living things. This raises a challenge for models in which category-specific deficits emerge as a result of a general deficit determined by some other factor. We suggest one way in which these models may account for the data by encoding inter-relations between the function and form of objects in semantic memory.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

When Leopards Lose Their Spots: Knowledge of Visual Properties in Category-specific Deficits for Living Things

Moss¹,

Tyler²,

Jennings³

1997

Cognitive Neuropsychology

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Detailed investigations of patterns of impaired and preserved semantic knowledge demonstrated by such patients provide invaluable insights into the way in which semantic information is stored and accessed. One especially important source of data comes from patients with what appear to be ''category-specific deficits''; selective impairments restricted to specific domains or categories of semantic knowledge (e.g., de Renzi & Lucchelli, 1994;Farah, McMullen, & Meyer, 1991;Hart & Gordon, 1992;Hillis & Caramazza, 1991;Moss, Tyler, & Jennings, 1997;Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992;Sartori & Job, 1988;Warrington & McCarthy, 1983;1987;Warrington & Shallice, 1984; for a review see Saffran & Schwartz, 1992). The most frequently observed pattern is that knowledge of living things is impaired with knowledge of artifacts relatively preserved, although the reverse pattern has occasionally been reported (Hillis & Caramazza, 1991;Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992;Warrington & McCarthy, 1983, 1987.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this is based on a small number of cases, and detailed neuroanatomical data is not available (e.g., Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992;Warrington & McCarthy, 1983) and there are several patients who do not unambiguously show this association. We have recently reported the case of a patient with generalized cerebral atrophy who developed a disproportionate deficit for artifacts over living things as her semantic impairment became more severe, indicating that this kind of deficit can arise in the absence of any obvious focal lesion .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Structure and the Structure of Concepts: A Distributed Account of Category-Specific Deficits

et al. 2000

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a new account of the fine-grained structure of semantic categories derived from neuropsychological, behavioral, and developmental data. The account places theoretical emphasis on the functions of the referents of concepts. We claim (i) that the distinctiveness of functional features correlated with perceptual features varies across semantic domains; and (ii) that category structure emerges from the complex interaction of these variables. The representational assumptions that follow from these claims make strong predictions about what types of semantic information are preserved in patients showing category-specific deficits following brain damage. These claims are illustrated with a connectionist simulation which, when damaged, shows patterns of preservation of distinctive and shared functional and perceptual information which varies across semantic domains. The data model both dissociations between knowledge for artifacts and for living things and recent neuropsychological evidence concerning the robustness of functional information in the representation of concepts.

show abstract

“…However, artefact explanations cannot account for some attested patterns of impairment, like selective impairment for biological categories in patients displaying intact structural knowledge (e.g., SB, studied by Sheridan & Humphreys, 1993), and selective impairment for nonbiological items, supposedly easier to process (Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992;Silveri et al, 1997;Tippett, Glosser, & Farah, 1996;Warrington & McCarthy, 1983. In particular, observations of opposite patterns of category deficits on the same items (Gonnerman et al, 1997;Hillis & Caramazza, 1991) strongly reinforce the notion that these deficits cannot be due to differences in the degree of processing demand.…”

Section: Downloaded By [Archives and Bibliothèques De L'ulb] At 06:20 1mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Conversely, body parts are often affected in cases showing a category-specific deficit for nonliving objects (e.g., Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992;Warrington & McCarthy, 1983. In addition, Suzuki, Yamadori, and Fuji (1997) demonstrated a comprehension deficit limited to body parts.…”

Section: Inter-category Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The fur of the crocodile and the mooing sheep: A study of a patient with a category-specific impairment for biological things

Kolinsky¹,

Fery²,

Messina³

et al. 2002

Cognitive Neuropsychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report a single case study of a brain-damaged patient, ER, who showed a remarkably consistent category-specific deficit for living things. His impairment was observed across tasks (naming, definition, matching, drawing from memory, questionnaires), input modalities (visual, verbal, nonverbal auditory), and output modalities (verbal vs. pointing or visual matching responses) as well as for different types of knowledge. Although visual knowledge of living things was severely affected, his category-specific impairment in nonverbal sound recognition is inconsistent with models of category-specific deficits based on pre-semantic visual descriptions. ER's deficit cannot fully be explained by item typicality, word frequency, visual complexity, homomorphy, age of acquisition, value to perceiver, or modality of transaction. Furthermore, in ER, contextual cues were even slightly detrimental for the recognition of animals. ER's naming and recognition errors were constrained by the categorical structure of the knowledge base: In most cases they respected both the second-and first-order superordinates. In particular, ER's knowledge of shared categorical properties related to biological function was almost spared. This result is compatible with the idea that, for living things, shared functional properties and shared perceptual properties are strongly correlated. Feature-based models assuming perceptual vs. functional semantic components cannot account for ER's deficit, since for living things he was impaired on both kinds of features to a similar extent. ER's behaviour is quite consistent with the notion that conceptual knowledge is organised categorically in the brain, with one or several specialised subsystems for biologically related entities. 301Requests for reprints should be addressed to Régine Kolinsky, Unité de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives (UNESCOG), Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 191, Av. F.D. Roosevelt, 50, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium (Fax: 32-2-650.22.09; Email: rkolins@ulb.ac.be).We wish to thank Tim Shallice for very helpful discussions on a former version of the manuscript, as well as the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their very constructive comments. We also thank all the people who participated in the present study, including the members of the Research Unit in Cognitive Neuroscience and of the Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, who were prepared to spend several hours filling in questionnaires. This work was supported by A.F.R.F.C.-F.N.R.S. grant. Downloaded by [Archives & Bibliothèques de l'ULB] at 06:20 10 July 2015The observation of specific semantic memory disorders, i.e., that some patients exhibit a selective loss of knowledge of items from certain categories, for example biological (or living) entities, by comparison with nonbiological (or non-living) objects, has generated a large debate about the internal organisation of the semantic system (see recent reviews, e.g., in Caramazza, 1998;Forde & Humphreys, 1999;Humphreys & Forde, 2001;...

show abstract

Calling a squirrel a squirrel, but a canoe a wigwam: a category-specific deficit for artefactual objects and body parts

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

When Leopards Lose Their Spots: Knowledge of Visual Properties in Category-specific Deficits for Living Things

When Leopards Lose Their Spots: Knowledge of Visual Properties in Category-specific Deficits for Living Things

Conceptual Structure and the Structure of Concepts: A Distributed Account of Category-Specific Deficits

The fur of the crocodile and the mooing sheep: A study of a patient with a category-specific impairment for biological things

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About