Description

pp. 171, “”Missing the Meaning? is an extended case study rich in contributions to theory. It is built around a detailed analysis of an aphasic patient, MK, who exhibits a set of bizarre and fascinating symptomcomplexes that make him “four patients in one.” The play on the words “missing the meaning” not only describes MK’s central impairment but suggests that there are intimate connections between MK’s symptom complexes which traditional accounts fail to capture. The ways in which the different symptoms interrelate have strong implications for lexical theory.In demonstrating that MK’s symptoms can be attributed to a set of specific information processing deficits, David Howard and Sue Franklin show that the traditional syndrome approach, which would simply classify MK as a Wernicke’s aphasic, misses important features of his performance. They apply a powerful cognitive neuropsychological method to show how a bewildering array of features may be traced to a small number of impairments to a model of lexical processing in normal people.”