A study of semantic memory after brain injury: Learning newly coined French words.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To investigate semantic memory in brain-injured patients. METHODS: We used the new word questionnaire (QMN) to assess the ability of 12 brain-injured patients and 12 healthy controls to define French words, which had been admitted to the dictionary in 1996 to 1997 or in 2006 to 2007. RESULTS: Despite amnesia or severe executive disorders, the brain-injured patients were able to learn new words and remember those that they already learnt. They successfully selected the relevant phrase in which the new word was placed and were reasonably good at recognizing the right definition from among decoys. In contrast, they had trouble defining the words and compensated for this by giving examples. These problems were correlated with their vocabulary and executive function scores in a battery of neuropsychological tests. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that frontal injury leads to an impairment in accurate word selection and the scheduling abilities required to generate word definitions.