Dissociation between semantic representations for motion and action verbs: Evidence from patients with left hemisphere lesions

Taylor, Lawrence J., Evans, Carys, Greer, Joanna, Senior, Carl, Coventry, Kenny ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2591-7723 and Ietswaart, Magdalena (2017) Dissociation between semantic representations for motion and action verbs: Evidence from patients with left hemisphere lesions. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11. ISSN 1662-5161

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Abstract

This multiple single case study contrasted left hemisphere stroke patients (N=6) to healthy age-matched control participants (N=15) on their understanding of action (e.g., holding, clenching) and motion verbs (e.g. crumbling, flowing). The tasks required participants to correctly identify the matching verb or associated picture. Dissociations on action and motion verb content depending on lesion site were expected. As predicted for verbs containing an action and/or motion content, modified t-tests confirmed selective deficits in processing motion verbs in patients with lesions involving posterior parietal and lateral occipitotemporal cortex. In contrast, deficits in verbs describing motionless actions were found in patients with more anterior lesions sparing posterior parietal and lateral occipitotemporal cortex. These findings support the hypotheses that semantic representations for action and motion are behaviourally and neuro-anatomically dissociable. The findings clarify the differential and critical role of perceptual and motor regions in processing modality-specific semantic knowledge as opposed to a supportive but not necessary role. We contextualise these results within theories from both cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience that make claims over the role of sensory and motor information in semantic representation.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: neuropsychology,left hemisphere,lateral occipitotemporal cortex,affordances,embodied cognition,semantic representations,aphasia
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 01 Feb 2017 02:18
Last Modified: 21 Oct 2022 09:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/62266
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00035

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