This study examined the effect of linguistic context on the graded str
ucture representation of common categories in adults with traumatic br
ain injury (TBI). Graded structure indicates that all members of a cat
egory are not equally representative with some members being better ex
amples than others. Ten adults who had suffered traumatic brain injuri
es as the result of motor vehicle accidents and 10 age-and gender-matc
hed neurologically intact adults participated in the study. The experi
mental task consisted of presenting each participant with 20 contextua
l sentences and asking them to select the best example of a category l
abel mentioned in each sentence. Each of the 20 sentences were followe
d by six exemplars: four exemplars of the common category label mentio
ned in the sentence and two exemplars that were members of other categ
ories. The specific exemplar of the category label was inferred by the
context meaning. The neurologically intact adults were significantly
more accurate than the TBI adults in choosing the best category exampl
e. However, error patterns were similar for each group with both group
s choosing a significantly higher proportion of true unrelated exempla
rs than any other type of error. Results are discussed relative to the
process of restructuring common category graded structure as a result
of semantic constraints imposed by linguistic context and limitations
in cognitive flexibility observed in TBI adults.