ABSTRACT
One natural reaction to the literature on category-specific deficits is to suggest that knowledge of different semantic domains is mediated by different cortical systems, which might be damaged independently from one another. This is the stance taken recently by Caramazza and Shelton (1998), in response to the perceived incapacity of the sensory-functional hypothesis to account for variability in the case literature. They write (Caramazza & Shelton, 1998, p. 9):
We will call this hypothesis the domain-specific knowledge hypothesis. The arguments these authors marshal to support their thesis rest primarily on a critical analysis of the sensory-functional hypothesis, much of which we have already discussed. In their view, the empirical phenomena described earlier are grounds for rejecting the sensory-functional framework all together. According to Caramazza and Shelton:
(1) The SF hypothesis does not predict the occurrence of category-specific deficits with equal impairment of sensory and functional features, although there is good evidence that such patients exist.
