Characteristics of Conversation in Patients with Right Hemisphere Damage

Abstract

The right hemisphere has been established to be responsible for the pragmatic aspects of language, and for controlling the use and application of language. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of conversation and topic manipulation in patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD). Methods: This study involved 24 subjects: 12 with right hemisphere cerebral infarction and 12 normal adults matched for sex, age, and education level. The data were collected using a structured protocol, and the collected data were analyzed by conversational participation indexes (number of turn-taking and frequency of utterances per turn), topic manipulation indexes (total number of total topics, frequency of turns per topic, and rate of topic initiation, rate of topic maintenance, and rate of topic switching), and conversational breakdown indexes (rate of overlap and rate of turn interruption). Results: There was no significant difference in the conversational participation indexes between the two groups. In terms of the topic manipulation indexes, the RHD group showed lower topic manipulation ability than did the normal adult group. There was no significant difference in the conversational breakdown indexes between the two groups. Conclusion: This study is significant as it identified the characteristics of conversation and topic manipulation ability in patients with RHD who had difficulty in pragmatic language, and provided baseline evidence for the assessment of and intervention for patients with RHD.