title: The assessment of pragmatics in Iranian patients with right brain damage.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Pragmatics is appropriate use of language across a variety of social contexts that provides accurate interpretation of intentions. The occurrence of the right hemisphere lesions can interfere with pragmatic abilities, and particularly with the processing of nonliteral speech acts.
  
  
  METHODS
  Since the objective of this study was to assess different aspects of pragmatic competence in the right hemisphere damage (RHD) patients, 20 Iranian patients with right hemisphere lesions were examined by adult pragmatic profile (APP) and a novel checklist was introduced for Persian language speaking individuals. Meanwhile, 40 healthy adult individuals, who were age and gender matched with RHD patients, were considered as the control group. After obtaining video records, all subjects were evaluated for 35 pragmatic skills, including 24 verbal, 5 paralinguistic, and 6 nonverbal aspects, by a two-point scale system.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Studying RHD patients and their healthy counterparts revealed that the performance by participants with right hemisphere lesions exhibited a high degree of inappropriate pragmatic abilities compared with controls in all domains. Furthermore, RHD patients showed a trend of increasing difficulty in understanding and producing different pragmatic phenomena, including standard communication acts.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Present results indicated that the right hemisphere lesions significantly affected pragmatic abilities in verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal aspects. Such a pattern of performance, which is in line with deficits previously reported for RHD, proved the unquestioned role of the right hemisphere in processing nonliteral language.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran ; Department of Speech Therapy, School of Paramedical Sciences, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Davood
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sobhani-Rad
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Askar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghorbani
authors.affiliation: Department of Rehabilitation, School of Rehabilitation, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Hassan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ashayeri
authors.affiliation: Department of Rehabilitation, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Shohereh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jalaei
authors.affiliation: Department of Performing Arts, School of Fine Arts, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Behrooz
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari
keywords: Pragmatics; Psychometric Assessment; Right Brain Damaged Patients