Linking language and categorization: evidence from aphasia

Abstract

In addition to its use in communication, language appears to have a variety of extra-communicative functions; disrupting language disrupts performance in seemingly non-linguistic tasks. Previous work has specifically linked linguistic impairments to categorization impairments. Here, we systematically tested this link by comparing categorization performance in a group of 12 participants with aphasia and 12 age- and education-matched control participants. Participants were asked to choose all of the objects that fit a specified criterion from sets of 20 pictured objects. The criterion was either "high-dimensional" (i.e., the objects shared many features, such as "farm animals") or "low-dimensional" (i.e., the objects shared one or a few features, such as "things that are green"). Participants with aphasia were selectively impaired on low-dimensional categorization. This selective impairment was correlated with the severity of their naming impairment and not with the overall severity of their aphasia, semantic impairment, lesion size, or lesion location. These results indicate that linguistic impairment impacts categorization specifically when that categorization requires focusing attention and isolating individual features--a task that requires a larger degree of cognitive control than high-dimensional categorization. The results offer some support for the hypothesis that language supports cognitive functioning, particularly the ability to select task-relevant stimulus features.