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Imageability effects on sentence judgement by right-brain-damaged adults
Lisa Guttentag Lederer1, April Gibbs Scott, Connie A Tompkins
1University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Aphasiology
|January 8, 2010
Summary
This study found that adults with right hemisphere damage (RHD) showed impaired ability to process low-imagery sentences, unlike healthy controls. This suggests RHD may selectively affect motor imagery generation.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Historically, visual image generation was attributed to the right hemisphere, but evidence remains conflicting.
- This study investigates the role of the right hemisphere in imagery generation, specifically in adults with right hemisphere damage (RHD).
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the association between the right hemisphere and imagery generation ability.
- To determine if visual and visuo-motor imagery generation abilities differ in adults with RHD.
Main Methods:
- 34 adults with unilateral RHD and 38 non-brain-damaged (NBD) controls participated.
- Participants completed an auditory sentence verification task using high- and low-imageability sentences.
- Performance accuracy and response times (RT) were recorded.
Main Results:
- Both groups generally showed higher accuracy and lower RT for low-imagery than high-imagery sentences.
- NBD participants had significantly faster RTs for low-imagery items, a difference that disappeared in the RHD group.
- Post hoc analysis indicated RHD selectively impaired motor, rather than visual, imagery generation.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest that right hemisphere damage disproportionately affects the processing of low-imagery items, potentially due to deficits in motor imagery.
- Future research should investigate visual and motor imagery generation capacities in RHD patients separately.
