Background: Although semantic dementia (SD) is characterised by a multimodal loss of semantic knowledge, it has been demonstrated that lexical-semantic representations are not equally disrupted in SD and that some categories may be recognised better than others. Little is known, however, about the pattern of the category-specific comprehension deficits in SD and whether it differs from that of other forms of progressive aphasias.

Aims: This exploratory study aimed to investigate the evolution of category-specific deficits of single-word comprehension in progressive aphasias.

Methods & Procedures: A total of 19 patients with a clinical diagnosis of SD, 25 patients with primary progressive aphasia with agrammatic and relatively nonfluent speech (PPA), and 25 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) with aphasia were studied longitudinally with the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB). The Auditory Word Recognition subtest of the WAB was utilised to assess comprehension of words derived from different semantic categories.

Outcomes & Results: The analysis revealed that, over time, category-specific deficits of single-word comprehension were seen in all three groups of patients. Participants with SD as well as those with PPA and AD were impaired on both pointing to fingers and the right-left orientation task. However, patients with SD were the only group that showed defective recognition of their own body parts. Interestingly, individuals with SD had no difficulties identifying colours, letters, and numbers, even during the follow-up testing. In addition, in all three groups the extent of category-specific deficits was associated with the severity of aphasia.

Conclusions: These results indicate that category-specific deficits of single-word comprehension are frequently seen not only in patients with SD but also in individuals with PPA or AD, and that the extent of these deficits is associated with the severity of aphasia. However, the pattern of these deficits is often different in these three forms of neurodegenerative conditions and more dissociations between semantic categories are observed as each of these diseases progresses.