title: Action and object processing in aphasia: from nouns and verbs to the effect of manipulability.
abstract: The processing of words and pictures representing actions and objects was tested in 21 aphasic patients and 20 healthy controls across three word production tasks: picture-naming (PN), single word reading (WR) and word repetition (WRP). Analysis 1 targeted task and lexical category (noun-verb), revealing worse performance on PN and verb items for both patients and control participants. For Analysis 2 we used data collected in a concurrent gesture norming study to re-categorize the noun-verb items along hand imagery parameters (i.e., objects that can/cannot be manipulated and actions which do/do not involve fine hand movements). Here, patients displayed relative difficulty with the 'manipulable' items, while controls displayed the opposite pattern. Therefore, whereas the noun-verb distinction resulted simply in lower verb accuracy across groups, the 'manipulability' distinction revealed a 'double-dissociation' between patients and control participants. These results carry implications for theories of embodiment, lexico-semantic dissociations, and the organization of meaning in the brain.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA. aarevalo@crl.ucsd.edu
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arévalo
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Perani
authors.forename: S F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Cappa
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bates
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dronkers
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000849:Anomia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001039:Aphasia, Broca / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001041:Aphasia, Wernicke / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011932:Reading; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior