Recognition of prosody following unilateral brain lesion: influence of functional and structural attributes of prosodic contours

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 36; no. 8; pp. 701 - 715
• Main Author: Pell, Marc D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.08.1998; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: acquired brain injury; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Adults; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Auditory Perception - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Damage; Brain Injuries - psychology; cerebral laterality; Cues; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; emotional prosody; Emotions; Emotions - physiology; Female; Functional Laterality - physiology; Hemiplegia - physiopathology; Humans; linguistic prosody; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Perception; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Recognition; speech perception; Speech Perception - physiology; Suprasegmentals; cerebral laterality; speech perception; emotional prosody; linguistic prosody; acquired brain injury; Human; Nervous system diseases; Prosody; Central nervous system disease; Emotion emotionality; Verbal perception; Lesion; Laterality; Cerebral disorder
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/S0028-3932(98)00008-6

The perception of prosodic distinctions by adults with unilateral right- (RHD) and left-hemisphere (LHD) damage and subjects without brain injury was assessed through six tasks that varied both functional (i.e. linguistic\emotional) and structural (i.e. acoustic) attributes of a common set of base stimuli. Three tasks explored the subjects’ ability to perceive local prosodic markers associated with emphatic stress (Focus Perception condition) and three tasks examined the comprehension of emotional-prosodic meanings by the same listeners (Emotion Perception condition). Within each condition, an initial task measured the subjects’ ability to recognize each ‘‘type’’ of prosody when all potential acoustic features (but no semantic features) signalled the target response ( Baseline). Two additional tasks investigated the extent to which each group’s performance on the Baseline task was influenced by duration ( D-Neutral) or fundamental frequency ( F-Neutral) parameters of the stimuli within each condition. Results revealed that both RHD and LHD patients were impaired, relative to healthy control subjects, in interpreting the emotional meaning of prosodic contours, but that only LHD patients displayed subnormal capacity to perceive linguistic (emphatic) specifications via prosodic cues. The performance of the RHD and LHD patients was also selectively disturbed when certain acoustic properties of the stimuli were manipulated, suggesting that both functional and structural attributes of prosodic patterns may be determinants of prosody lateralization.