Institutes of Neurology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Policlinico A. Gemelli, 00168 Rome, Italy.
Brain Cogn. 2012 Oct;80(1):155-9. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2012.06.002. Epub 2012 Jul 7.
Semantic memory was investigated in a patient (MR) affected by a severe apperceptive visual agnosia, due to an ischemic cerebral lesion, bilaterally affecting the infero-mesial parts of the temporo-occipital cortices. The study was made by means of a Semantic Knowledge Questionnaire (Laiacona, Barbarotto, Trivelli, & Capitani, 1993), which takes separately into account four categories of living beings (animals, fruits, vegetables and body parts) and of artefacts (furniture, tools, vehicles and musical instruments), does not require a visual analysis and allows to distinguish errors concerning super-ordinate categorization, perceptual features and functional/encyclopedic knowledge. When the total number of errors obtained on all the categories of living and non-living beings was considered, a non-significant trend toward a higher number of errors in living stimuli was observed. This difference, however, became significant when body parts and musical instruments were excluded from the analysis. Furthermore, the number of errors obtained on the musical instruments was similar to that obtained on the living categories of animals, fruits and vegetables and significantly higher of that obtained in the other artefact categories. This difference was still significant when familiarity, frequency of use and prototypicality of each stimulus entered into a logistic regression analysis. On the other hand, a separate analysis of errors obtained on questions exploring super-ordinate categorization, perceptual features and functional/encyclopedic attributes showed that the differences between living and non-living stimuli and between musical instruments and other artefact categories were mainly due to errors obtained on questions exploring perceptual features. All these data are at variance with the 'domains of knowledge' hypothesis', which assumes that the breakdown of different categories of living and non-living things respects the distinction between biological entities and artefacts and support the models assuming that 'category-specific semantic disorders' are the by-product of the differential weighting that visual-perceptual and functional (or action-related) attributes have in the construction of different biological and artefacts categories.
语义记忆在一位患者（MR）中进行了研究，该患者由于缺血性脑损伤，双侧颞叶顶叶的下内侧部分受到影响，患有严重的知觉性视觉失认症。研究采用语义知识问卷（Laiacona、Barbarotto、Trivelli 和 Capitani，1993）进行，该问卷分别考虑了四个生物类别（动物、水果、蔬菜和身体部位）和四个人工制品类别（家具、工具、车辆和乐器），不需要视觉分析，并允许区分超类分类、感知特征和功能/百科全书知识的错误。当考虑所有生物和非生物类别获得的总错误数时，观察到生物刺激物的错误数量有增加的非显著趋势。但是，当从分析中排除身体部位和乐器时，这种差异变得显著。此外，乐器上获得的错误数量与动物、水果和蔬菜的生物类别上获得的错误数量相似，且明显高于其他人工制品类别上获得的错误数量。当将每个刺激物的熟悉度、使用频率和原型性纳入逻辑回归分析时，这种差异仍然显著。另一方面，对探索超类分类、感知特征和功能/百科全书属性的问题进行单独分析的结果表明，生物和非生物刺激物之间以及乐器和其他人工制品类别之间的差异主要是由于探索感知特征的问题而产生的错误。所有这些数据都与“知识领域”假设不一致，该假设假设不同的生物和非生物类别之间的分解遵守生物实体和人工制品之间的区别，并支持假设认为“类别特异性语义障碍”是视觉感知和功能（或与动作相关）属性在构建不同生物和人工制品类别中的差异权重的副产品。
