The effect of right cerebral hemisphere damage on collaborative planning in conversation: an analysis of intentional structure

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of right cerebral hemisphere damage on the capacity to take shared responsibility for the development of an intentional structure in conversation. Intentions are important determiners of both discourse structure and utterance meaning in context. Right‐hemisphere damaged (RHD) individuals have been reported to have difficulty in the use of prosody as well as performing and appreciating the process of discourse tailoring which is dependent on recognizing speakers intentions. Audio taped samples of naturalistic conversations between RHD individuals and normal speakers were analysed. Text‐level discourse processing analyses involved measures of global discourse structure and self‐monitoring accuracy. Prosodic analyses included fundamental frequency (F0) resetting, pause durations and inter‐turn intervals. The results revealed that speakers with right cerebral hemisphere damage do not, first, use prosody to alert listeners to changes in discourse structure, and, second, assume equal responsibility for the development and maintenance discourse structure.

• Discourse analyses
• conversation
• right hemisphere damage
• intentional structure