A Distinctive Case of Word Meaning Deafness?

Abstract

We report the case of a patient, DrO, who has impaired auditory comprehension but intact written comprehension. His ability to repeat words that he cannot comprehend, and his good performance on auditory lexical decision, suggestthat DrO has an impairment of the mappings between the lexical representations of spoken words and theircorresponding semantic representations; a word meaning deafness. DrO's ability to understand heard words depends on their imageability and length, such that he is worse at comprehending words that are both short and abstract.This is interpreted in terms ofphonologicalandsemantic distinctiveness.