Animals recover but plant life knowledge is still impaired 10 years after herpetic encephalitis: The long-term follow-up of a patient

Cognitive Neuropsychology

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 78-94

  Laiacona, Marcella ^a   Barbarotto, Riccardo ^b   Capitani, Erminio ^c  

^a IRCCS   (Italy)

^b Fatebenefratelli and Eye Hospital   (Italy)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MILAN   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ANIMAL; ARTICLE; ARTIFACT; CASE REPORT; FOLLOW UP; FRUIT; HERPES SIMPLEX ENCEPHALITIS; HUMAN; LANGUAGE DISABILITY; MALE; MEDICAL LITERATURE; NOMENCLATURE; PLANT; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SEMANTICS; STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE; VEGETABLE; VISUAL AID;

EID: 14644443567     PISSN: 02643294     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02643290442000004     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. The mean male familiarity for the 10 vegetable stimuli was 2.08 (SD = 0.52, range 1.46-3.05), that for the 10 fruit stimuli was 2.31 (SD = 0.25, range 1.84-2.68), and that for the 10 animal stimuli was 1.44 (SD = 0.24, range 1.18-1.97). Vegetable stimuli were celery, corn, onion, pepper, artichoke, asparagus, mushroom, carrot, lettuce, tomato. Fruit stimuli were banana, watermelon, pineapple, cherry, pear, strawberry, lemon, apple, grapes, orange. Animal stimuli were giraffe, camel, ostrich, frog, swan, caterpillar, cow, rooster, butterfly, mouse. The list of the 60 stimuli and all the familiarity values are reported by Albanese et al. (2000). The values of word frequency (for the Italian language), prototypicality, image agreement, and visual complexity for all the stimuli are reported in Laiacona and Capitani (2001).
2. For this set of stimuli the ratings of estimated age of acquisition of fruit was 3.47, that of vegetables was 4.63, and that of animals was 3.98 (Nisi, Longoni, & Snodgrass, 2000).
3. Directly estimated values of age of acquisition were not available for the stimuli of our battery. On the other hand, in other material, age of acquisition estimated from adult ratings showed a correlation with true age of acquisition (r = .85, Morrison, Chappell, & Ellis, 1997), which is similar to the correlation between the latter variable and familiarity (-.80, Burani, Barca, & Arduino, 2001). On this basis, it seems not particularly specific. Anyway, for the stimuli in our battery, fruit shows the lowest age of acquisition and vegetables show the highest, with animals ranking in between. The ratings by Nisi et al. (2000) were 3.26, 4.71, and 4.09 for fruit, vegetables, and animals respectively. Because fruit and vegetables show a similar level of impairment, age of acquisition is unable to account for the discrepancy between animals and plant life in this case.
4. Follow-up data were reported for two other patients affected by biological categories impairment, HJA and JBR. Case HJA was examined more than 10 years after a left posterior cerebral artery stroke by Riddoch, Humphreys, Gannon, Blott, and Jones (1999), but his deficit was prevailingly agnosic, and at the outset he performed well on probe questions when the stimuli were presented auditorily, so we cannot study recovery in this case (on the contrary, a deterioration in some tasks was observed). Case JBR (Warrington & Shallice, 1984) was examined by Funnell and De Mornay Davies (1996) many years after herpes encephalitis, which had caused a bilateral temporal damage; no direct evaluation of recovery was presented, but JBR was still substantially impaired in the last examination when asked to verify properties concerning biological stimuli (animals and fruit/vegetables) that he was unable to name.
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