Raposo, Ana Luísa Nunes, 1978-Fonseca, JoséRibeiro, Maria Sara Francisco Ferreira de Almeida2023-03-202023-03-2020232022http://hdl.handle.net/10451/56714Tese de mestrado, Ciência Cognitiva, 2022, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiênciasSemantic memory and its breakdown is a fundamental field of cognitive science, merging theoretical models of semantic cognition, with its clinical implications in neural degradation and cognitive deficits, and thus bridging the areas of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The Control Semantic Cognition framework has proposed that effective semantic cognition comprises representation and control processes (Patterson et al., 2007). This study aims to investigate the extent to which a widely used neuropsychological test of semantic impairment – the Camel and Cactus Test (CCT) – enables to differentiate between these two semantic functions. To address this issue, we collected, in a group of healthy young participants (n = 100), a set of measures that index the representation and control demands of the CCT items. Then, we analyzed the performance of patients with stroke aphasia (n = 82) as well as control groups (n = 158) in light of the acquired measures. The findings confirm that the CCT items vary in representation and control requirements. Moreover, patients with stroke aphasia revealed worse performance for items with greater semantic control demands. Results argue in favour of the CSC framework by providing support for the specific impairment in semantic control in patients with stroke aphasia. They also demonstrate that the CCT is a useful tool to identify semantic control deficits. Semantic cognition is a complex cognitive process dependent on the proper interaction of the representation and control systems, the individual measure and distinction of which proves to be of paramount importance, in both clinical and investigation environments.engMemória SemânticaRepresentação SemânticaControlo SemânticoAfasia por Acidente Vascular CerebralTeste do Camelo e do CatoTeses de mestrado - 2023master thesis203492897