Contextual influences on comprehension of multiple-meaning words by right hemisphere brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged adults

Characterising comprehension difficulties after right brain damage: Attentional demands of suppression function

“…In broad terms, these problems are often described as a consequence of integration deficits, or difficulties constructing a coherent model by assimilating discourse elements into a conceptual whole (see e.g., Tompkins, Fassbinder, Lehman Blake, & Baumgaertner, 2002). Presumed integration deficits are frequently reflected in tasks involving nonliteral forms (e.g., Bihrle, Brownell, & Powelson, 1986;Schmitzer, Strauss, & DeMarco, 1997;Stemmer, Giroux, & Joanette, 1994). More generally, comprehenders with RBD have particular difficulties when required to reconcile multiple, seemingly incongruent inferences or mental models to arrive at a full understanding of a discourse unit.…”

Memory-Based Specification of Verbal Features for Classifying Animals into Super-Ordinate and Sub-Ordinate Categories

“…Second, we specified non-or less biological, cultural, and affective features (Leech, 1974;Brownell et al, 1984;Schmitzer et al, 1997). Cultural (CUL) features were attributes related to human activities (e.g., "is edible").…”

Pathways to lexical ambiguity: fMRI evidence for bilateral fronto-parietal involvement in language processing

“…Subsequent online studies further revealed that RHD patients are impaired in their ability to effectively use context (e.g., Beeman, 1993;Grindrod & Baum, 2003;Klepousniotou & Baum, 2005;Schmitzer et al, 1997;Tompkins et al, 2000; but cf. Leonard & Baum, 1998;Leonard, Baum & Pell, 2001), and coupled with the lack of any time-course effects on their performance, RHD patients seem to be unable to effectively select only the contextually appropriate meaning and eventually suppress inappropriate ones.…”

“…Early off-line (i.e., pen and paper) studies (e.g., Brownell, 1988;Brownell, Potter, Michelow, & Gardner, 1984;Brownell, Simpson, Bihrle, Potter, & Gardner, 1990;Schmitzer et al, 1997;Winner & Gardner, 1977) showed that patients with focal RH damage have problems with lexical ambiguity in general, and metaphor in particular. These researchers compared the performance of patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD), left hemisphere damage (LHD) and normal control individuals by using either sentence/context-picture matching 6 (e.g., Schmitzer et al, 1997;Winner & Gardner, 1977) or word triad relatedness judgment (e.g., Brownell, 1988;Brownell, Potter, Michelow, & Gardner, 1984;Brownell, Simpson, Bihrle, Potter, & Gardner, 1990) paradigms. Overall, it was found that when individuals with LHD were presented with ambiguous adjectives (e.g., "warm" to refer to "hot" or "loving"), they chose metaphoric interpretations (e.g., "loving") more frequently and they were less likely to select literal foils (e.g.,…”

“…In addition, in comparisons of comprehension performance across neutral, connotation-biased and denotation-biased contexts, RHD patients exhibited decreased accuracy levels in the neutral and connotation-biased contexts. Thus, it was suggested that secondary or subordinate (i.e., non-literal, connotative) meanings are much less salient when the right hemisphere is dysfunctional (Brownell et al, 1990;Schmitzer et al, 1997).…”