ABSTRACT
Introduction In 1981, Warrington described two patients (JBR and VER) who showed a double dissociation between their comprehension of objects on the one hand, and animals, plants, and food on the other. This dissociation was described as a distinction between the processing of living and nonliving things, and was argued to refl ect the organisation of information in semantic memory. Since then, further patients have been reported who showed similar dissociations; most have shown impairments to living things relative to nonliving (Basso, Capitani, & Laiacona, 1988; Hart, Berndt, & Caramazza, 1987; McCarthy & Warrington, 1988; Pietrini et al., 1988; Sartori & Job, 1988; Silveri & Gainotti, 1988; Warrington & Shallice, 1984), but two patients have been reported to show the reverse dissociation, with nonliving things impaired relative to living (Warrington & McCarthy, 1983; 1987).
