摘要：Persons with aphasia frequently experience difficulties in retrieving verbs. Little is known about the integrity ofverb representations and mechanisms underlying verb retrieval in aphasia. One proposal is that impaired (access to)action representations may limit verb retrieval, the rationale for which is based on neuroimaging andpsycholinguistic findings in neurologically healthy adults. Action verb processing and execution of related actionsare shown to be linked in healthy adults, presumably by activation of corresponding sensorimotor neural substrates,such as the face/mouth region of the motor cortex for the verb smiling (Pulvermuller et al., 2005). In passiveprocessing of action verbs (for example, lexical decision), verbs related to specific body parts (picking, kicking, andlicking) also show differential processing speed (Pulvermuller, 2005). It is an open question whether such semanticsomatotopic effects are manifested in action verb naming. The present study investigated two questions pertaining toaction verb naming in healthy adults and those with aphasia: 1) if action verb naming is influenced by somatotopiceffects (body part used by the action), and 2) if somatotopically related verbs can facilitate action verb naming.
