LINGUIST List 13.1991

Fri Jul 26 2002

Diss: Psycholing: Marini "The role played..."

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

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1. tetreus, Psycholing: Marini "The role played by the right hemisphere..."

New Dissertation Abstract

Institution: University of Rome, La Sapienza
Program: PhD in linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2002
Author: Andrea Marini 

Dissertation Title: 

The role played by the right hemisphere in the organization of complex
textual structures

Linguistic Field: Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics

Subject Language: Italian

Dissertation Director 1: Carlo Caltagirone


Dissertation Abstract: 

A group of eleven patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD) was
compared to a group of eleven left hemisphere damaged (LHD) non
aphasic subjects and eleven neurologically intact controls in
performing three story description tasks. In the first task subjects
were asked to describe a set of four previously read stories whereas
the second and the third tasks required subjects to describe,
respectively, ordered and unordered picture stories. The texts
elicited in this way were analyzed with a newly developed, original
method of text analysis, which allows to have a complete view of the
micro- and macrolinguistic processing abilities of the subjects
examined. Important differences were found in the three groups
relative to the task used. In the retelling of previously read stories
the three groups performed relatively good both at the micro- and the
macrolinguistic level of processing. In the picture description tasks,
however, the performances of the RHD subjects on one side and those
of LHD and normal controls on the other were considerably different
with respect to the coherence and cohesion of the text as well as to
the construction of the mental model of the story.

The results partially confirm previously reported descriptions of
brain damaged patients' text productions and partially introduce new
aspects of textual processing that have to be highlighted in future
studies, such as the ability to select and adapt lexical entries to
particular textual contexts. As a whole, the results of this work
allow us to gather further information about the hemispheric
lateralization of complex linguistic skills as the textual competence
and on its structure and functioning.