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Category-Specific Deficits in a Self-Organizing Model of the Lexical-Semantic System

  • Conference paper
Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Neural Computing ((PERSPECT.NEURAL))

Abstract

Conceptual categories such as animate objects and artifacts can be selectively impaired after brain damage. The dominant view, partly derived from recent connectionist modeling of semantic memory disorders, is that category-specific deficits result from selective damage to noncategorically organized visual or functional semantic subsystems. We propose that selective semantic impairments arise from damage to a system that includes a categorically organized lexical-semantic level (referred to as lemma level), that is a level “binding” semantic features to other kinds of representations (e.g., visual, phonological, orthographic, etc.). Such level of representation can arise spontaneously in networks that are exposed to featural representations of word meaning within an unsupervised learning framework. The model develops a topographic organization reflecting the semantic categories and can easily account for category-specific dissociations as a result of focal damage to the network.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Italy

    Marco Zorzi

  2. Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, UK

    Marco Zorzi

  3. School of Behavioral Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Conrad Perry, Jo Ziegler & Max Coltheart

Authors
  1. Marco Zorzi
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  2. Conrad Perry
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  3. Jo Ziegler
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  4. Max Coltheart
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Dietmar Heinke PhD , Glynn W. Humphreys PhD  & Andrew Olson PhD ,  & 

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Zorzi, M., Perry, C., Ziegler, J., Coltheart, M. (1999). Category-Specific Deficits in a Self-Organizing Model of the Lexical-Semantic System. In: Heinke, D., Humphreys, G.W., Olson, A. (eds) Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience. Perspectives in Neural Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0813-9_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0813-9_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-052-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0813-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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