Hodges J R, Greene J D
University of Cambridge Neurology Unit, Addenbrooke's Hospital, U.K.
Q J Exp Psychol A. 1998 Feb;51(1):121-34. doi: 10.1080/713755753.
It has recently been suggested that patients with semantic breakdown may show the phenomenon of so-called "naming without semantics". If substantiated, this finding would clearly have a major impact on theories of face and object processing, all of which assume that access to semantic knowledge is a prerequisite for successful naming. In order to investigate this issue, we studied recognition, identification (the ability to provide accurate information), and naming of 50 famous faces by 24 patients with mild to moderate dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT) and 30 age-matched controls. The DAT group was impaired in all three conditions. An analysis of the concordance between identification and naming by each patient, for each stimulus item, established that naming a famous face was possible only with semantic knowledge sufficient to identify the person. Our data support the hypothesis that naming is not possible unless semantic information associated with the target is available. Naming without semantics, therefore, did not occur in patients with DAT. By contrast, there were 206 instances (17% of the total responses) in which the patients were able to provide detailed, accurate identifying information yet were unable to name the person represented. The implication of these findings for models of face identification and naming are discussed.
最近有人提出，患有语义障碍的患者可能会表现出所谓的“无语义命名”现象。如果这一发现得到证实，那么显然会对脸部和物体加工理论产生重大影响，因为所有这些理论都假定获取语义知识是成功命名的先决条件。为了研究这个问题，我们对24名轻度至中度阿尔茨海默型痴呆（DAT）患者和30名年龄匹配的对照组进行了50张名人脸的识别、辨认（提供准确信息的能力）和命名研究。DAT组在所有三种情况下都存在障碍。对每个患者针对每个刺激项目的辨认和命名之间的一致性分析表明，只有具备足以辨认出此人的语义知识才有可能命名名人脸。我们的数据支持这样一个假设，即除非有与目标相关的语义信息，否则无法进行命名。因此，DAT患者中并未出现无语义命名的情况。相比之下，有206例（占总反应的17%）患者能够提供详细、准确的辨认信息，但却无法说出所呈现人物的名字。本文讨论了这些发现对人脸识别和命名模型的意义。
