Lexicality Effects in Word and Nonword Recall of Semantic Dementia and Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia.

Background: Verbal working memory is an essential component of many language functions, including sentence comprehension and word learning. As such, working memory has emerged as a domain of intense research interest both in aphasiology and in the broader field of cognitive neuroscience. The integrity of verbal working memory encoding relies on a fluid interaction between semantic and phonological processes.