title: Story arrangement ability in right brain-damaged patients.
abstract: The purpose of the present study is to explore the role of an explicit expression of macrostructure in facilitating performance on a Story Arrangement Task. Subjects were presented with a series of sentences which they were required to arrange into a coherent paragraph. Half of the items were preceded by a theme sentence containing the framework or macrostructure of the paragraph, while the items without theme sentences required subjects to formulate their own macrostructure in a bottom-up fashion. Results of the study support the hypothesis that the presence of a theme sentence facilitates performance on the Story Arrangement Task for non-brain-damaged individuals (NBDs) and left brain-damaged patients (LBDs), but not for right brain-damaged patients (RBDs). This suggests that RBDs are impaired in their ability to recognize and benefit from explicit thematic statements in narratives. Other discourse-level deficits in RBDs are discussed in the light of these findings. The performance of LBDs on such tasks is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: E I
authors.initials: EI
authors.lastname: Schneiderman
authors.forename: K G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Murasugi
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Saddy
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D002561:Cerebrovascular Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis; D007807:Language Tests; D008128:Logic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012660:Semantics; D013850:Thinking; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014888:Wechsler Scales