title: Category-specific naming and modality-specific imagery.
abstract: Some attempts to explain category-specific disorders have stressed how different modality knowledge bases (i.e., visual knowledge vs motoric/functional knowledge) may underlie the distinction between living and nonliving things. This study examined 60 normal subjects for the relationship between picture naming in four subcategories (animals, fruit/vegetables, praxic and nonpraxic objects) and imagery vividness in seven modalities. Participants made more nonliving than living errors; and females made more nonliving errors than males. There was a significant correlation between naming of animals and fruits/vegetables and visual imagery vividness; however, this association was also significant for praxic and nonpraxic object naming. There was no evidence of associations between kinesthetic imagery and praxic object naming or gustatory/olfactory imagery and fruit/vegetable naming. These findings accord with the notion of a general association between visual imagery and picture naming, but provide no support for more specific links between modality-specific imagery vividness and naming in different categories.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, London Guildhall University, United Kingdom. klaws@lgu.ac.uk
authors.forename: Keith R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Laws
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014825:Vocabulary