AN IMPAIRMENT IN PROCESSING VERBS THEMATIC ROLES - A THERAPY STUDY

This paper describes a subject with a selective verb disorder. Verb re trieval was impaired both in spontaneous speech and naming. When verbs were accessed a striking dissociation emerged. Subcategorization was surprisingly intact, while the assignment of verbs' thematic roles was poor. Verb comprehension was also impaired, particularly when tasks d emanded an appreciation of thematic information. A remediation program me was administered which aimed to improve insight into the role struc tures and mapping requirements of three argument verbs. Evaluation sho wed gains in the production of this type of verb, which generalized to untreated items. However, there was no generalization to verbs of a d ifferent type. Progress was also suggested by a second evaluative proc edure, in which observers were asked to judge the intelligibility of t he subject's output, before and after therapy. The theoretical implica tions of the findings are discussed.