Disturbances of the social cognition in right-hemisphere brain-damaged patients

Abstract

15 drawings of social situations were presented to 21 left- and 21 right hemisphere brain-damaged patients. They were required to interpret the situations shown in the drawings. The right hemisphere lesioned group performed significantly worse than did the left-hemisphere lesioned group. This deficit in social cognition in the former group is viewed as a further consequence of their well-known basic disturbance in structuring non-linguistic information. This "social disorientation" is considered as a major factor in the social behavioral deficits observable in the right hemisphere lesioned patients. Emotional disturbances are discussed as a possible additional factor.