Surian L, Siegal M
University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Brain Lang. 2001 Aug;78(2):224-32. doi: 10.1006/brln.2001.2465.
Patients with right hemisphere (RHD) or left hemisphere brain damage (LHD) were tested on Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks presented with visual aids that illustrated the relevant premises. As a measure of pragmatic ability, patients were also asked to judge replies in conversation that violated Gricean maxims. Both RHD and LHD patients performed well on the ToM tasks presented with visual aids, but RHD patients displayed difficulty when the same tasks were presented only verbally. In addition, RHD patients showed reduced sensitivity to pragmatic violations. These findings point to the role of right hemisphere structures in processing information relevant to conversations. They indicate that a crucial source of RHD patients' errors in ToM tasks may involve difficulties in utterance interpretation owing to impairments of visuospatial processing required for the representation of textual information.
患有右半球（RHD）或左半球脑损伤（LHD）的患者接受了心理理论（ToM）任务测试，这些任务配有说明相关前提的视觉辅助工具。作为语用能力的一项衡量指标，患者还被要求判断对话中违反格赖斯准则的回答。右半球脑损伤和左半球脑损伤患者在配有视觉辅助工具的心理理论任务中表现良好，但当相同任务仅以口头形式呈现时，右半球脑损伤患者表现出困难。此外，右半球脑损伤患者对语用违规的敏感度降低。这些发现指出了右半球结构在处理与对话相关信息中的作用。它们表明，右半球脑损伤患者在心理理论任务中出现错误的一个关键原因可能是由于文本信息表征所需的视觉空间处理受损，导致话语解释困难。
