ABSTRACT
Understanding the nature of semantic category-specific deficits might provide one avenue for discovering the organisation of semantic knowledge in the brain. Since the early 1980s, when Warrington and colleagues (Warrington, 1981; Warrington & MacCarthy, 1983; Warrington & Shallice, 1984) described their fascinating cases in detail, a wealth of data has shown that knowledge of living things can be impaired largely independently of knowledge of non-living things (e.g. Basso, Capitani, & Laiacona, 1988; Hillis & Caramazza, 1991; Laiacona, Capitani, & Barbarotto, 1997; McCarthy & Warrington, 1988; Sheridan & Humphreys, 1993; Silveri & Gainotti, 1988; see Forde & Humphreys, 1999, for a review). Similarly, neuropsychologists have identified a number of cases of disproportionate impairment of the category of non-living things relative to the category of living things (Hillis & Caramazza, 1991; Sacchett & Humphreys, 1992; Warrington & McCarthy, 1987).1
