The Ability fo Right- and Left-Hemisphere-Damaged Individuals to Produce and Interpret Prosodic Cues Marking Phrasal Boundaries

The ability of right- & left-hemisphere-damaged individuals (total N = 20) to produce & perceive the acoustic correlates to phrase boundaries was investigated in two experiments. In the production experiment, the utterance pink and black and green was elicited in three conditions corresponding to different arrangements of colored squares. Acoustic analyses revealed that both left- & right-hemisphere-damaged patients exhibited fewer of the expected acoustic patterns in their productions than did normal control subjects (N = 10). The reduction in acoustic cues to phrase boundaries in the utterances of both patient groups was perceptually salient to three trained listeners. The perception experiment demonstrated a significant impairment in the ability of both left- & right-hemisphere-damaged individuals to perceive phrasal groupings. Results are discussed in relation to current hypotheses concerning the cerebral lateralization of speech prosody. 2 Tables, 9 Figures, 1 Appendix, 60 References. Adapted from the source document