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Dissertation
Working with semantic memory: frontal lobe selectivity and judgement
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
1997
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00010105
Abstract
The Semantic Judgment Test (SJT) is a simple measure of semantic memory processing, modeled after Khomskaya and Skakun's definition paradigm (1985) and devised to study how nonepisodic, explicit memory processing is disrupted by frontal pathology. The concept of working-with-memory (WWM) can be used as a theoretical tool to describe frontal lobe executive memory processing. The rationale is that novel, rule-based processing (in this case, the ability to select the most meaningful attributes of word stimuli) requires frontal mediation. To test this idea, a semantic memory battery was administered to 20 frontally lesioned participants and 20 healthy controls matched by sex, age, and education. The SJT correlated with known measures of frontal functioning and working memory. Furthermore, the SJT differentiated between frontal lesioned and comparison groups with frontals exercising markedly poorer selectivity in word definition and tending to endorse tangential words as central to defining primary stimulus words. The obtained findings lend support for the elaborated theory of working memory, with the frontal lobes as the executors of semantic information processing.
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Details
- Title
- Working with semantic memory
- Creators
- Lauren Montenegro Littlefield
- Contributors
- Thomas Taysum Hewett (Advisor) - Drexel University, Drexel University (1970-)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- vii, 114 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts and Sciences; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991021889080804721