The production of linguistic prosodic structures in subjects with right hemisphere damage

Abstract

This study examined the right hemisphere contribution to the production of linguistic prosody where acoustic features of prosodic structures in different linguistic contexts were examined accompanied by perceptual judgements. When control and right hemisphere damaged (RHD) subjects were asked to produce lexical stress differences (Experiment 1), prosodic boundaries to denote syntactic constituents (Experiment 2), and questions and statements (Experiment 3) conveyed through prosody, both groups were similar in producing the duration, F0 and amplitude acoustic cues within prosodic structures to convey different linguistic meanings. Listeners were able to perceive the meanings of the productions of both groups in Experiments 1 and 3, but had greater difficulty perceiving the productions of the RHD group in Experiment 2. These findings, which suggest that the right hemisphere has a limited role in the production of linguistic prosody, are discussed in relation to perceptual theories of prosody.