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Effects of right- and left-hemisphere damage on understanding conversational implicatures
- Source :
- Brain and language. 68(3)
- Publication Year :
- 1999
-
Abstract
- Processing of implicatures was examined in 27 right-brain-damaged (RBD) and 31 left-brain-damaged (LBD) stroke patients with focal lesions using a new implicatures battery (IB) as part of an exploration of the neural basis and modularity of natural language pragmatics. Following Grice, we sampled implicatures of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. Verbal implicatures consisted of two-sentence conversational vignettes which are literally problematic. Nonverbal implicatures consisted mostly of famous paintings that are literally problematic (e.g., Magritte's "Le Domain d'Arnheim"). The patient has to identify and solve the problem. To compare with performance on the IB, patients also received a Hebrew adaptation of Gardner and Brownell's Right Hemisphere Communication Battery, a new test of basic speech acts (verbal and nonverbal assertions, questions, requests, and commands), a Hebrew version of the Western Aphasia Battery, and standardized neuropsychological tests. Both LBD and RBD patients were significantly impaired in implicature processing relative to age-matched normal controls. In general, both patient groups showed weak correlations of implicatures with extents of lesions in left perisylvian language area or its right-hemisphere (RH) homolog. However, performance of LBD and RBD patients on the IB revealed different patterns of correlations with other pragmatic, language, and nonlanguage tests. In LBD patients, there was a greater association between performance on verbal and nonverbal implicatures and between performance on implicatures and basic speech acts than in RBD patients. Given the different modes in which right-and left-hemisphere (LH) damage affect the processing of conversational implicatures, it remains to be discovered how the two hemispheres interact to process natural language pragmatics in the normal brain in real time.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
Linguistics and Language
Cognitive Neuroscience
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Neuropsychological Tests
Severity of Illness Index
Language and Linguistics
Lateralization of brain function
Functional Laterality
Speech and Hearing
Nonverbal communication
medicine
Aphasia
Humans
Language disorder
Western Aphasia Battery
Association (psychology)
Aged
Analysis of Variance
Brain Diseases
Language Tests
Linguistics
Pragmatics
Middle Aged
medicine.disease
Laterality
Speech Perception
Female
Psychology
Cognition Disorders
Implicature
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 0093934X
- Volume :
- 68
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Brain and language
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0221be6f9a99b6144c00446d3878b141