Superordinate vs basic level knowledge in aphasia: A case study

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldAn aphasic patient, RW, was studied in order to address the issue of whether semantic access proceeds from the general to the specific. In naming, RW showed better performance at the basic level than superordinate level, both in visual confrontation naming and in naming to definition. In comprehension, he showed equal impairment at the superordinate and basic levels. In addition, he had disproportionate difficulties in comprehending the concept 'vehicle' without showing a comparable deficit in naming individual exemplars of that category. Various aspects of the patient's performance argued against attributing these findings to a semantic access deficit. The current data are consistent with a feature model of semantic memory in which impairment is equally likely to occur for superordinate and basic level