Processing of speech acts by right hemisphere brain-damaged patients: An ecological approach

Four non-ecological studies (Heeschen and Reisches 1979, Hirst et al. 1984, Foldi 1987, Weylman et al. 1989) have shown that a lesion to the right hemisphere can cause deficits in the processing of indirect speech acts. The authors have suggested that an alternative interpretation based on contextual elements could underlie this difficulty. The purpose of this study was to verify whether subjects who suffer a right hemisphere lesion have as much difficulty interpreting context and speech acts in a natural communicative situation as in a non-natural or pseudo-natural situation. A group of 28 subjects (14 RHD subjects and 14 normal controls) were given three tasks, which represented three different communicative situations: natural, nonnatural, and pseudo-natural. The results show that RHD subjects process speech acts as efficiently as controls when they occur in a natural or pseudo-natural situation. However, they process direct and indirect speech acts significantly worse than controls in a non-natural co...