Right Hemisphere and Verbal Communication (1990)

This book provides a critical review of the questions as well as the data pertaining to the contribution of the right "non-dominant" hemisphere to verbal communication. Three main sources of observation are reviewed: experiments with normal subjects, with split-brain subjects, and with brain-damaged subjects. The first three chapters present (1) a historical introduction, (2) a critical review of the advantages and limits of the different methodologies used, and (3) a discussion of the contribution of the aphasia literature. Then, each subsequent chapter addresses one particular component of the possible contribution of the right hemisphere to verbal communication: lexical-semantics, written language, prosody and pragmatics. This book is intended for professionals who would like to consult a critical contemporary review of the subject. It offers a unique synthesis of nearly all the behavioral literature on the topic coming from many different, but complementary, fields such as neuropsychology, linguistics, neurology and speech sciences; it also contains a helpful bibliography. The authors open many new doors to promising research avenues in terms of both theoretical and practical questions, and offer a rapidly accessible source of information and reference.