title: Semantic relevance and semantic disorders.
abstract: Semantic features are of different importance in concept representation. The concept elephant may be more easily identified from the feature <trunk> than from the feature <four legs>. We propose a new model of semantic memory to measure the relevance of semantic features for a concept and use this model to investigate the controversial issue of category specificity. Category-specific patients have an impairment in one domain of knowledge (e.g., living), whereas the other domain (e.g., nonliving) is relatively spared. We show that categories differ in the level of relevance and that, when concepts belonging to living and nonliving categories are equated to this parameter, the category-specific disorder disappears. Our findings suggest that category specificity, as well as other semantic-related effects, may be explained by a semantic memory model in which concepts are represented by semantic features with associated relevance values.
authors.affiliation: Università di Padova, Pandova, Italy. giuseppe.sartori@unipd.it
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sartori
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lombardi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D020803:Encephalitis, Herpes Simplex / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology