Right-brain-damaged adults' maintenance of activation for subordinate semantic features of words

Scharp, Victoria and Tompkins, Connie and Fassbinder, Wiltrud and Meigh, Kimberly (2006) Right-brain-damaged adults' maintenance of activation for subordinate semantic features of words. [Clinical Aphasiology Paper]

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Abstract

This study assessed whether right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) adults’ deficits in processing alternative meanings of lexical ambiguities would extend to semantic feature representations of unambiguous lexical items. If so, RHD deficit was expected to affect only activation/deactivation for subordinate features that are incompatible with the most common representations of unambiguous words (e.g., ‘rotten’ for ‘apple’). Contrary to predictions, neither RHD nor control participants evidenced a change in activation over time for this type of subordinate features. Continued research on RHD adults’ communicative strengths and weaknesses will have future implications for clinical assessment and management.

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