Presentation and preliminary results of Semantic Battery Nombela (I). A new instrument to evaluate semantic categorial impairment

Abstract

The study of categorical dissociations between the domains of living thing (LT) and nonliving thing (NLT) is highly relevant to the investigation of the organization and functioning of semantic memory, as well as its possible brain localization. Semantic batteries are the best approach for studying these matters. These instruments use different semantic tasks, but elaborated with the same items, in order to get convergent evidence from them. We present a new instrument: the Semantic Battery Nombela, which is intended to enrich Spanish neuropsychological assessment since, to our knowledge, there are not many Spanish instruments to evaluate specifically semantic memory impairments, with the exception of the semantic battery, EMSDA (Peraita et al., 2000). Furthermore, our battery tries to im-prove other similar instruments by studying 14 semantic categories, new theoretically interesting cate-gories, and objects with a different range of manipulability. Finally, the items of the battery were con-trolled in some important variables.