Abstract
Purpose : This study was aimed at investigating the discourse characteristics of right hemisphere damage(RHD)and clarifying the impact of cognitive dysfunction on those characteristics. Methods : The subjects in this study were 51 patients with RHD and 50 matched healthy control participants. A comic strip story was used to elicit narrative discourse from both groups, and 34 quantitative items were set in order to clarify differences between the characteristics of both groups. In addition, factor analysis was carried out on scores of 5 neuropsychological tests—Japanese Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised(WAIS-R), The Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome(BADS), Trail Making Test part A(TMT-A), Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task(PASAT), and Reading Span Test(RST)—of the RHD group. Results : Discourse produced by the RHD patients was rated as inefficient and verbose. Five factors were extracted by the factor analysis. We interpreted the first as “planning and monitoring factor,” the second as “working memory and attention factor,” and the third as “general knowledge and vocabulary factor.” These 3 factors were significantly associated with inefficient discourse. Conclusion : The findings suggest that discourse characteristics of RHD patients are attributed to executive dysfunction, attentional disorders, and semantic deficits. These findings indicate that quantitative discourse analysis is an efficient tool for distinguishing the communicative disorder of RHD patients.
