Interactive/Activation in Normal and Brain-damaged Individuals: Can Context Penetrate the Lexical ‘Module’?
Interactive/Activation in Normal and Brain-damaged Individuals: Can Context Penetrate the Lexical ‘Module’?
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Original abstract
Anomia is defined as a pathological deficit in finding and producing words. It is the one symptom that appears in every form of aphasia. It is also an early and ubiquitous symptom in dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, and milder forms of anomia are among the most common complaints in normal aging. Classically, anomia has been explained as a disconnection or deterioration in the links between semantic and lexical representations (i.e. between meaning and phonological/orthographic forms — (Farah & Wallace 1992; Gainotti, Silveri, Villa & Miceli 1986; Hadar, Jones & Mate-Kole 1987; le Dorze & Nespoulous 1989; Lucchelli & de Renzi 1992). In fact, some studies have found that training can greatly improve the performance of anomic aphasics, (Colby, Chrisinaz, Parkinson, Graham & Karpf 1981) a clear indication that semantic representations themselves have not been damaged in anomia. Since the residual language deficit in anomic patients seems to revolve around lexical access (i.e. naming), it would be useful to know whether these patients show normal forms of facilitation and/or inhibition in real-time lexical processing. The same is true for the milder word-finding deficits that are often found in normal aging. Is this deficit restricted entirely to word production, or can we find correlates and (perhaps) a possible cause in other aspects of lexical access? And if so, what is the nature of the disturbance in lexical access that underlies this common disorder?