It is well established that patients with semantic memory impairment show a relative sparing of general superordinate information as compared with more detailed item-specific information. The objective of the current study was to examine whether or not this superordinate superiority effect is also reliably observed in individuals with stroke. The participants were 3 patients with a diagnosis of semantic dementia (SD) and 4 left middle cerebral artery stroke patients. In the first experiment, participants were administered a series of spoken-word–picture matching tasks, in which picture identity was probed under two conditions: item name (e.g., goose, beetle, shark, hedgehog) and superordinate name (e.g., bird, insect, fish, mammal). The SD patients showed the predicted pattern of performance, identifying stimuli significantly more accurately by their superordinate term than by their specific name. By contrast, the stroke patients showed the reverse pattern of inferior performance in the superordinate condition in all versions of the experimental task. In a second experiment comparing comprehension of basic-level names (e.g., dog, bird, fish) and subordinate-level names (e.g., Dalmatian, sparrow, trout), stroke patients also showed a reversal of the normal basic-level effect, showing less accurate comprehension of basic-level names. The pattern of results documented among the stroke patients cannot be accommodated obviously or readily by existing models of conceptual knowledge. These contrasting abilities of SD patients, stroke patients, and normal healthy participants to process subordinate, basic-level, and superordinate names are considered in relation to disorders of executive processing and taxonomic categorization.

中文翻译：

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语义性痴呆和失语性中风患者对上级、基本级和下级名称的理解模式对比

众所周知，与更详细的项目特定信息相比，语义记忆障碍患者表现出对一般上级信息的相对保留。当前研究的目的是检查在中风个体中是否也能可靠地观察到这种上级优势效应。参与者是 3 名诊断为语义性痴呆 (SD) 的患者和 4 名左大脑中动脉卒中患者。在第一个实验中，参与者接受了一系列口语-图片匹配任务，其中图片身份在两种条件下进行探测：项目名称（例如，鹅、甲虫、鲨鱼、刺猬）和上级名称（例如，鸟、昆虫、鱼类、哺乳动物）。SD 患者表现出预测的表现模式，通过它们的上级术语比通过它们的具体名称更准确地识别刺激。相比之下，在所有版本的实验任务中，中风患者在上级条件下表现出较差的表现。在比较基本名称（例如狗、鸟、鱼）和下级名称（例如达尔马提亚、麻雀、鳟鱼）的理解的第二个实验中，中风患者也表现出正常基本级别效应的逆转，表明对基本级名称的理解不太准确。现有的概念知识模型不能明显或容易地适应中风患者中记录的结果模式。SD 患者、中风患者和正常健康参与者处理下属、基层、