Verbal pragmatics following unilateral stroke: Emotional content and valence

Verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production were examined in 16 right brain-damaged (RBD), 16 left brain-damaged (LED), and 16 normal control right-handed adults. The facilitation effect of emotional content, valence hypothesis, and relationship between pragmatics and emotion were evaluated. Participants produced monologues while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Transcribed monologues were rated for appropriate ness on 6 pragmatic features: conciseness, lexical selection, quantity, relevancy, specificity, and topic maintenance. Overall, brain-damaged groups were rated as significantly less appropriate than normals. Consistent with the facilitation affect, emotional content enhanced pragmatic performance of LED aphasic participants yet suppressed performance of RED participants. Contrary to the valence hypothesis, RED participants were more impaired for positive emotions and LED participants for negative emotions. Pragmatic appropriateness was not strongly correlated with a measure of emotional intensity.