Brain and Language xxx (2007) xxx–xxx www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l 0093-934X/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.01.002 ARTICLE IN PRESS Please cite this article in press as: Jonkers, R., & Bastiaanse, R., Action naming in anomic aphasic speakers: EVects of instrumentality and name relation, Brain and Language (2007), doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.01.002 Action naming in anomic aphasic speakers: EVects of instrumentality and name relation Roel Jonkers ¤ , Roelien Bastiaanse Department of Linguistics, Groningen Graduate School for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Accepted 9 January 2007 Abstract Many studies reveal eVects of verb type on verb retrieval, mainly in agrammatic aphasic speakers. In the current study, two factors that might play a role in action naming in anomic aphasic speakers were considered: the conceptual factor instrumentality and the lexical fac- tor name relation to a noun. Instrumental verbs were shown to be better preserved than non-instrumental verbs in a group of anomic aphasic speakers but not in a group of Broca’s aphasic speakers. Name relation to a noun improved the performance of the anomic apha- sic speakers as well. Again, no eVect was found in the group of Broca’s aphasic speakers. Verbs with a name relation to a noun were better retrieved in action naming than verbs without a name relation. These Wndings are discussed in terms of the spreading activation theory of Dell. (Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 283–321.)  2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Anomic aphasia; Verb Wnding problems; EVect of verb type; Instrumentality; Verb–noun name relation 1. Introduction Recent studies on comprehension, naming, and sentence construction revealed that diVerent factors inXuence verb retrieval in aphasic speakers. Meaning (Barde, Schwartz, & Boronat, 2006; Breedin & Martin, 1996; Breedin, SaVran, & Schwartz, 1998; Jones, 1984), verb morphology (Kiss, 2000), the verb-argument structure (Kiss, 2000; Kim & Thompson, 2000; Thompson, Shapiro, Li, & Schendel, 1994; Thompson, Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997), tran- sitivity and ergativity (Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 2004, 2005; De Bleser & Kauschke, 2003; Jonkers, 2000; Luzzatti et al., 2001, 2002; Thompson, 2003), and thematic informa- tion (Black, Nickels, & Byng, 1991; Breedin & Martin, 1996; Byng, 1988; Kiss, 2000; Luzzatti et al., 2002; Thomp- son et al., 1997) played a role in verb processing in aphasic speakers. Most of these eVects were reported for aphasic speakers suVering from agrammatic or Broca’s aphasia. The factors that inXuence verb retrieval relate in general to grammatical aspects of the verbs. The eVect of these factors is therefore often explained by the underlying grammatical deWcit Broca’s aphasic speakers are assumed to have (cf. for example Thompson, 2003). The present study describes eVects of non-grammatical factors on verb retrieval, i.e., a conceptual factor (instru- mentality) and a phonological/lexical factor (name relation between a noun and a verb). It will be investigated whether these factors also inXuence verb retrieval in Broca’s aphasic subjects, although they do not concern grammatical fac- tors. Next to the data of Broca’s aphasic subjects also the data of anomic aphasic subjects will be presented in order to Wnd out whether these factors play a role in verb retrieval in these subjects. The latter seems plausible, as anomic aphasic speakers are assumed to suVer from a lexical retrieval deWcit, which is more speciWcally considered to be due to problems in retrieving the complete phonological information of words (e.g., Ellis & Young, 1988; Kay & Ellis, 1987). SpeciWc problems in verb form retrieval have been described by Bastiaanse (1991), Jonkers (1998), and Jonkers and Bastiaanse (1998) in anomic aphasic speakers. These authors assume that anomic speakers are able to * Corresponding author. Fax: +31 50 363 68 55. E-mail address: r.jonkers@rug.nl (R. Jonkers).