Do living and non-living categories need further fractionation? A study of picture naming in a pathological sample

A group of 51 patients affected by possible semantic memory deficit were given a picture naming task for the purposes of a comparison between six categories, three of Nonliving nature (tools, furniture, vehicles) and three of a Living nature (animals, fruits, and vegetables). A logistic regression analysis was used for a multiple single case study, where also the items' basic difficulty was included in the model. Besides some patients showing a dissociation between Living and Nonliving categories, other patients showed a finer selectivity on naming, differentiating animals from fruits and vegetables, tools from nonmanipulable objects, and even vehicles from furniture. These results are examined in the light of current theories of semantic category specificity. (C) 2000 Academic Press.