Theories of Lexical Processing and Rehabilitation of Lexical Deficits

A series of single-subject studies of brain-damaged patients who each make semantic errors in naming is presented. A cognitive analysis of performance in each case provides evidence for proposing relatively selective impairment to one or more components of lexical processing. Studies of the effectiveness of treatment for these patients indicate that some patients with the same putative locus of impairment require different treatments, and some patients with different loci of impairment respond to the same treatment. Three forms of the “diagnosis7treatment relationship are illustrated: (1) two very different treatment approaches are equally appropriate with respect to a given locus of damage, but individual…