Naming Faces and Objects Without Comprehension A Case Study

The case of a 74-year-old woman with Alzheimer's dementia is presented. Her ability to identify objects and faces was investigated, and it was shown that an item's name could sometimes be recalled in the absence of any appropriate semantic information. Performance on multiple-choice tests of semantic knowledge for items that were named was not above chance levels, even though the semantic test immediately followed the naming response. These data appear problematic for current models of face and object processing, where access to a name is dependent upon prior access to information about the identity of the item. However, in the trials where the patient named faces without category information, she appeared to know that the people were celebrities, which suggests that this limited information may allow access to the name and that the degree of semantic access required when naming faces is lower than previously thought.