Abstract
The proverb interpretation task (PIT) is often used in clinical settings to evaluate frontal “executive” dysfunction. However, only a relatively small number of studies have investigated the relationship between frontal lobe lesions and performance on the PIT. We compared 52 patients with unselected focal frontal lobe lesions with 52 closely matched healthy controls on a proverb interpretation task. Participants also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests, including a fluid intelligence task (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices). Lesions were firstly analysed according to a standard left/right sub-division. Secondly, a finer-grained analysis compared the performance of patients with medial, left lateral and right lateral lesions with healthy controls. Thirdly, a contrast of specific frontal subgroups compared the performance of patients with medial lesions with patients with lateral frontal lesions. The results showed that patients with left frontal lesions were significantly impaired on the PIT, while in patients with right frontal lesions the impairments approached significance. Medial frontal patients were the only frontal subgroup impaired on the PIT, relative to healthy controls and lateral frontal patients. Interestingly, an error analysis indicated that a significantly higher number of concrete responses were found in the left lateral subgroup compared to healthy controls. We found no correlation between scores on the PIT and on the fluid intelligence task. Overall our results suggest that specific regions of the frontal lobes contribute to the performance on the PIT.
Highlights
Questions remain regarding the localisation of processes within the frontal lobes that underpin the interpretation of proverbs. This study investigated this issue in a population of patients with unselected frontal lobe lesions performing a proverb interpretation task
This is the first study to investigate the performance of a large number of non-aphasic patients with focal frontal lesions on a proverb interpretation task (PIT)
The PIT requires an abstract interpretation of proverbs that relates to a wide variety of contexts, as opposed to a literal, concrete interpretation
Summary
P. 285) concluded that the difficulties of frontal patients with abstraction emerged from their “lapse into irrelevant connections” when constructing abstract mental representations. As far as specific experimental results are concerned, Cicerone, Lazar, and Shapiro (1983) reported an abstract thought impairment in a group of frontal lobe patients who were shown to be unable to generate hypotheses regarding the underlying patterns in a visual learning task. Other studies showed that frontal lobe damage led to difficulties in abstracting rules in temporal and spatial patterns (Burgess & Shallice, 1996; Reverberi, Lavaroni, Gigli, Skrap, & Shallice, 2005; Villa, Gainotti, De Bonis, & Marra, 1990). Using functional imaging, increased cerebral activity has been observed in prefrontal areas alongside increased “chunking” of specific visual sequences into abstract shapes during a spatial memory task (Bor, Duncan, Wiseman, & Owen, 2003)
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