A cognitive neuropsychological case study of anomia. Implications for psychological models of word retrieval

The case of a neurological patient with severe anomic word-finding difficulties is reported. A detailed cognitive neuropsychological investigation of the patient's ability to name objects to confrontation was carried out in an attempt to determine where his cognitive deficits might lie. In contrast to the findings of recent case studies of word-finding difficulty (e.g., Howard and Orchard-Lisle, 1984), it was observed that the patient seemed to have a clear understanding of the items that he was trying to name, suggesting that his problems in word-finding were not semantically based. Indeed, the patient would often generate partial phonological information about the sought-after word, indicating that he had a specific target in mind, and this was reminiscent of 'tip-of-the-tongue' states in normal word-finding. A difficulty in retrieving complete phonological forms of words is considered as the probable locus of his anomia. A distinction is made between semantically-based and phonologically-based anomias.