Cogn Neuropsychol. 2000 Jun 1;17(4):365-89. doi: 10.1080/026432900380445.
Following a right-hemisphere lesion, the patient SM had impaired object recognition, with good elementary visual abilities, and could derive information about object structure. He was also impaired on all tasks tapping stored structural knowledge, even when tested in the verbal modality. This suggests that SM has a disorder affecting stored knowledge of object structure, though he remains able to assemble novel structural descriptions. His object recognition ability also appeared significantly worse for non-living things. By contrast, existing models relating to stored knowledge would predict that SM would show greater impairment with living things. We argue that SM's deficit reflects the loss of a type of structural knowledge that relates to the "within-item structural diversity" of items. It is argued that living things show less structural variation than objects in the natural world, and might arguably be easier to recognise, because the image of the to-be-recognised object would be similar to the stored representation. Hence, a deficit affecting this aspect of stored knowledge would differentially impact upon non-living things. This argument receives confirming independent support from the finding that normal subjects ratings for the within-item structural diversity of visual stimuli are (unlike other "critical" variables) significant predictors of SM's naming performance.
患者 SM 右侧大脑半球损伤后，出现了物体识别障碍，存在良好的基本视觉能力，可以获取关于物体结构的信息。他在所有需要利用存储的结构知识的任务上都表现不佳，即使在语言模态下进行测试也是如此。这表明 SM 存在一种影响物体结构存储知识的障碍，尽管他仍然能够组合新的结构描述。他的物体识别能力对非生物的表现也明显更差。相比之下，现有的与存储知识相关的模型预测 SM 在识别生物时会表现出更大的障碍。我们认为，SM 的缺陷反映了一种与物品“内部结构多样性”有关的结构知识的丧失。有人认为，生物比自然界中的物体具有更少的结构变化，而且可能更容易识别，因为待识别物体的图像与存储的表示相似。因此，影响这种存储知识方面的缺陷会对非生物产生不同的影响。这一论点得到了独立支持，正常受试者对视觉刺激内部结构多样性的评分（与其他“关键”变量不同）是 SM 命名表现的显著预测因素。
