Beyond scripts: A note on the capacity of right hemisphere-damaged patients to process social and emotional content

Abstract

Individuals with right hemisphere damage (RHD) can comprehend simple scripts but have difficulties understanding more complex forms of discourse such as stories and jokes. This study sought to discover the point beyond simple scripts at which such patients begin to experience difficulties. Three-sentence, script-like vignettes which described everyday situations were created along two major dimensions: a social dimension (reflecting presence or absence of interactions between characters); and an emotional dimension (reflecting a positive, negative, or neutral emotion felt by a protagonist in the situation). Right hemisphere-damaged patients were asked to provide emotional characterizations of, and continuations to, these situational vignettes. Results indicated that individuals with right hemisphere damage were more likely than control subjects to attribute a positive emotional state to a character in a neutral situation. In other respects, there were no significant differences between RHD subjects and controls, although the RHD subjects made significantly more factual errors in their continuations than did control subjects.