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We report data from a patient, NE, who after surviving encephalitis made misidentification responses to faces known to her premorbidly. NE frequently mistook one famous person for another, one relative for another, and, under some conditions, believed that a picture of a famous person actually depicted one of her relatives. Unlike previously reported patients who have misidentified faces, NE (1) performed reasonably well on tests of facial perception, (2) showed no obvious executive deficits in tests of frontal lobe function, and (3) showed an ability to constrain her misidentification responses in certain situations. A cognitive neuropsychological investigation revealed that NE was able to judge misidentified faces as familiar but failed to access precise semantic information. There were also semantic deficits when knowledge of people was probed through nonvisual modalities--for example, when naming people from definition. We argue that a semantic, as opposed to executive, deficit plays the major (though probably not sole) role in NE's misidentification responses, and we consider how the inter-active activation model of face recognition (Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990) can account for such disorders of person recognition more comprehensively than the Bruce and Young (1986) model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Theoretical studies have shown that some deficits in verbal short-term/working memory can impact comprehension abilities. Clinicians often suspect that their clients are failing to understand speech because they cannot remember what has been said. Yet there are no reports of how to treat such a problem. Aims: To see if improving the short-term/working memory abilities of a person with aphasia would improve her comprehension at the sentence level. In addition, we sought to explore the issues involved in carrying out research-based therapy in a clinical environment. Methods & Procedures: The memory and language impairments of a person with aphasia were assessed. The memory impairments were then targeted in therapy by requiring the repetition of gradually more demanding sentences. Comprehension itself was not practised at all during therapy. Outcome and Results: Certain aspects of short-term and working memory improved post-therapy, notably an increase in digit span and an ability to repeat more words in sentences. There was a limited generalisation of improvement to comprehension tasks, meaning that the client could understand longer sentences and required fewer repetitions. The existence of possible additional impairments was revealed post-therapy. Conclusions: If memory limitations are causing comprehension difficulty, therapy may need to take the focus away from language and on to short-term/working memory. However, improvement may be limited. In addition, we suggest that within the context of a clinical setting, a reasonable balance between research and therapy can be struck (albeit with some difficulty) if compromises are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Many studies of clients with 'pure' anomia (i.e. word finding difficulties in the absence of semantic impairment) have found a lack of generalization to the naming of items that are not treated in therapy. One explanation for this result is that the phonological output lexicon consists of discrete entries which are not as interconnective as those in the semantic system (Miceli, Amatrano, Capasso, and Caramazza 1996). However, more recent studies suggest that therapy which requires more explicit and unaided access on the part of the client might indeed effect generalization (McNeil, Small, Masterton, and Fossett, 1995; Spencer, Doyle, McNeil, Wambaugh, Park, and Carroll, 2000). Aims: The main aim of our study was to investigate whether requiring a client to name pictures with minimal help (i.e. cueing, repetition) from therapists would result in generalization. Methods & Procedures: We used a single case design, employing multiple baselines across behaviours to control for possible spontaneous recovery. The participant was MB, a 79 year old client who was anomic subsequent to a stroke. Therapy sessions required MB to name a set of pictures. Instead of cues, she was required to describe and 'talk around' each picture for as long as it took until the name came to her. We termed this therapy 'Circumlocutioninduced naming' (CIN). Nonparametric statistical analysis was performed on pre and post test results. Outcomes & Results: Therapy resulted in improvement to untreated as well as to treated words, and there was also a qualitative change in error patterns on untreated words (namely fewer unrelated errors and more semantic errors). Performance on unrelated control tasks did not improve. Conclusions: Our results suggest that CIN may effect a generalized improvement on the phonological output lexicon. We hypothesize that the therapy 'exercises' the impaired link between semantics and phonology to a greater degree than do other methods (e.g. phonemic cueing, repetition). This suggests that clients with moderate to mild anomia might benefit from therapy that requires them to take a more active and independent part in accessing words. We discuss some difficulties in the interpretation of our results, including the possible existence of spontaneous recovery, and the issue of exactly what our therapy targeted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical accounts of pure word meaning deafness are rare; accounts of its rehabilitation are virtually non-existent. We contrast the effects of two therapies in a patient with pure word meaning deafness. One therapy required only implicit auditory access from the patient (silent reading comprehension exercises). The second required explicit auditory access (auditory comprehension exercises), and thus appeared to be more suited to the exact locus of the patient's impairment. Improvement was observed after both types of therapy. However, improvement on implicit access therapy was influenced by the use of a compensatory strategy developed by the patient. In contrast, improvement on explicit access therapy was more durable, and appeared to be due to a direct effect on the audition–semantics link, rather than to compensation. We conclude that pure word meaning deafness is amenable to treatment, and that cognitive models can be useful in designing such therapy studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a cognitive analysis and therapy study of a patient, MGM, who was alexic due to a profound visual agnosia. Our analysis indicates that the patient had impaired processing of multiple form elements, and impaired verbal memory, along with relatively good phonological skills. A set of therapies was introduced in which MGM was taught (1) to identify letters, (2) to link letters to phonemes, (3) to blend consonant clusters, and (4) to use a verbal compensatory strategy to read irregular words. We demonstrate that the therapy was successful in helping MGM to read. We discuss the results in the light of arguments about the utility of cognitive approaches to therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]