The general/specific breakdown of semantic memory and the nature of superordinate knowledge: Insights from superordinate and basic-level feature norms

The deterioration of semantic memory usually proceeds from more specific to more general superordinate categories, although rarer cases of superordinate knowledge impairment have also been reported. The nature of superordinate knowledge and the explanation of these two semantic impairments were evaluated from the analysis of superordinate and basic-level feature norms. The results show that, in co…