Appreciation of pragmatic interpretations of indirect commands: Comparison of right and left hemisphere brain-damaged patients

Indirect commands can elicit "literal" interpretations, directly reflecting the content and form of the utterance, or "pragmatic" interpretations, incorporating knowledge of paralinguistic, social, or historical cues. The aim of this study was to demonstrate how right brain-damaged (RBD) subjects would perform on judgments of these forms of communication. It was predicted that relative to normal controls or aphasic subjects, the RBD subjects would have significant difficulty appreciating the pragmatic interpretation relative to the literal one. Subjects judged the appropriateness of two-part exchanges consisting of indirect commands, direct commands, Wh-questions coupled with pragmatic responses, literal responses, responses verifying the physical surround, or syntactically similar responses. The results confirm that the RBD subjects had a selective difficulty appreciating the indirect commands. Their preference of literal over pragmatic interpretations was significantly different to that of aphasics or normal controls. Hypotheses are offered to explain these data.

[1]  Semantic disorders of auditory language comprehension in right brain-damaged patients , 1979, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[2]  B. Ackerman.  Children's understanding of definite descriptions: pragmatic inferences to the speaker's intent. , 1979, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[3]  A. Young,et al.  Left hemisphere superiority for pronounceable nonwords, but not for unpronounceable letter strings , 1984, Brain and Language.

[4]  John R. Searle.  SPEECH ACTS AND RECENT LINGUISTICS * , 1975 .

[5]  M. Mesulam,et al.  Disturbances in prosody. A right-hemisphere contribution to language. , 1981, Archives of neurology.

[6]  J. J. Myers.  Right hemisphere language: Science or fiction? , 1984 .

[7]  Patricia M. Greenfield,et al.  The structure of communication in early language development , 1979 .

[8]  Howard Gardner,et al.  Pragmatic Aspects of Communication in Brain-Damaged Patients**We wish to acknowledge the support of the National Institute of Neurological and Communication Disorders and Stroke (M 11408), the Veterans Administration and Harvard Project Zero. , 1983 .

[9]  A. Koller,et al.  Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language , 1969 .

[10]  N. Varney,et al.  Linguistic correlates of pantomime recognition in aphasic patients. , 1978, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[11]  E. Zurif,et al.  The effects of focal brain damage on pragmatic expression. , 1983, Canadian journal of psychology.

[12]  K. Poeck,et al.  Analysis of Prosody in the Spontaneous Speech of Patients with CV-Recurring Utterances , 1985, Cortex.

[13]  M. Moscovitch.  4 – The Linguistic and Emotional Functions of the Normal Right Hemisphere , 1983 .

[14]  Craig W. Linebaugh,et al.  Comprehension of Idiomatic Expressions by Right-Hemisphere-Damaged Adults , 1981 .

[15]  F. Boller,et al.  Comprehension in severe aphasics. , 1972, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior.

[16]  J. Dore.  Holophrases, speech acts and language universals , 1975, Journal of Child Language.

[17]  P. Prinz.  A note on requesting strategies in adult aphasics. , 1980, Journal of communication disorders.

[18]  J. Flavell,et al.  Development of the ability to distinguish communicative intention and literal message meaning. , 1984, Child development.

[19]  L. Leonard,et al.  Aphasics' comprehension of contextually conveyed meaning , 1978, Brain and Language.

[20]  B. Ackerman.  Children's comprehension of presupposed information: Logical and pragmatic inferences to speaker belief☆ , 1978 .

[21]  Michael Halliday,et al.  Explorations in the functions of language , 1973 .

[22]  Edgar Zurif,et al.  The relation between gesture and language in aphasic communication , 1979, Brain and Language.

[23]  B. Ackerman.  Children's Understanding of Speech Acts in Unconventional Directive Frames. , 1978 .

[24]  H. Gardner,et al.  The comprehension of metaphor in brain-damaged patients. , 1977, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[25]  Eran Zaidel,et al.  Auditory Vocabulary of the Right Hemisphere Following Brain Bisection or Hemidecortication , 1976, Cortex.

[26]  M. Dennis,et al.  Language acquisition following hemidecortication: Linguistic superiority of the left over the right hemisphere , 1976, Brain and Language.

[27]  J B Hellige,et al.  Information processing in the cerebral hemispheres: selective hemispheric activation and capacity limitations. , 1979, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[28]  M. Gazzaniga,et al.  Language and speech capacity of the right hemisphere. , 1971, Neuropsychologia.

[29]  Susan Ervin-Tripp,et al.  Wait for Me, Roller Skate! , 1977 .

[30]  F. Boller,et al.  Features of auditory comprehension in severely impaired aphasics. , 1974, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior.

[31]  Howard Gardner,et al.  Surprise but not coherence: Sensitivity to verbal humor in right-hemisphere patients , 1983, Brain and Language.

[32]  E. Bates.  Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics , 1976 .

[33]  E. Kaplan,et al.  DISTURBANCE OF GESTURE AND PANTOMIME IN APHASIA. , 1963, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[34]  H. Gardner,et al.  Comprehension and appreciation of humorous material following brain damage. , 1975, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[35]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Polite responses to polite requests , 1980, Cognition.

[36]  A. Holland,et al.  The efficacy of functional communication therapy for chronic aphasic patients. , 1982, The Journal of speech and hearing disorders.

[37]  J. Levy.  Language, cognition, and the right hemisphere. A response to Gazzaniga. , 1983, The American psychologist.

[38]  C. Mateer,et al.  Right hemisphere appreciation of prosodic and linguistic indications of implicit attitude , 1985, Brain and Language.

[39]  R. Nebes.  Superiority of the minor hemisphere in commissurotomized man for the perception of part-whole relations. , 1971, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior.

[40]  M S Gazzaniga,et al.  Right hemisphere language following brain bisection. A 20-year perspective. , 1983, American Psychologist.

[41]  K. Goldstein.  Language and Language Disturbances , 1948 .

[42]  J. Austin.  How to do things with words , 1962 .

[43]  T. Rasmussen,et al.  INTRACAROTID INJECTION OF SODIUM AMYTAL FOR THE LATERALIZATION OF CEREBRAL SPEECH DOMINANCE EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS , 1960 .

[44]  Marilyn Shatz,et al.  On the development of communicative understandings: An early strategy for interpreting and responding to messages , 1978, Cognitive Psychology.

[45]  Alan Searleman,et al.  A review of right hemisphere linguistic capabilities. , 1977, Psychological bulletin.

[46]  R W Sperry,et al.  Perceptual unity of the ambient visual field in human commissurotomy patients. , 1973, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[47]  H. H. Clark.  Responding to indirect speech acts , 1979, Cognitive Psychology.

[48]  M. Moscovitch.  On the representation of language in the right hemisphere of right-handed people , 1976, Brain and Language.

[49]  W. Labov,et al.  Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy As Conversation , 1976 .

[50]  H. Gardner,et al.  Inference deficits in right brain-damaged patients , 1986, Brain and Language.

[51]  William Hirst,et al.  Constraints on the processing of indirect speech acts: Evidence from aphasiology , 1984, Brain and Language.

[52]  M. Moscovitch.  Right‐hemisphere language , 1981 .