Tompkins Connie A, Fassbinder Wiltrud, Lehman Blake Margaret, Baumgaertner Annette, Jayaram Nandini
Communication Science and Disorders, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004 Dec;47(6):1380-95. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2004/103).
Evidence conflicts as to whether adults with right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) generate inferences during text comprehension. M. Beeman (1993) reported that adults with RHD fail to activate the lexical-semantic bases of routine bridging inferences, which are necessary for comprehension. But other evidence indicates that adults with RHD activate multiple interpretations in various comprehension domains. In addition, the activation of contextually inappropriate interpretations is prolonged for many adults with RHD and predicts poor discourse comprehension. This study contrasted Beeman's activation failure hypothesis with the prediction that adults with RHD would generate multiple interpretations in text comprehension. The relation between activation of textually incompatible inferences and discourse comprehension was also investigated for this group. Thirty-seven adults with RHD and 34 without brain damage listened to brief narratives that required a bridging inference (BI) to integrate the text-final sentence. This final sentence, when isolated from its text, was strongly biased toward a contextually incompatible alternate interpretation (AI). Auditory phoneme strings were presented for lexical decision immediately after each text's initial and final sentence. Adults with RHD were both faster and more accurate in making lexical decisions to BI-related target words in final-sentence position than in initial-sentence position. Thus, contrary to the activation failure hypothesis, adults with RHD generated the lexical-semantic foundations of BIs where they were required by the text. AI generation was evident in accuracy data as well, but not in response time data. This result is partially consistent with the multiple activation view. Finally, greater activation for contextually incompatible interpretations was associated with poorer discourse comprehension performance by adults with RHD.
关于右脑损伤（RHD）的成年人在文本理解过程中是否会进行推理，证据存在冲突。M. 比曼（1993）报告称，患有RHD的成年人无法激活常规搭桥推理的词汇语义基础，而这是理解所必需的。但其他证据表明，患有RHD的成年人在各种理解领域会激活多种解释。此外，对于许多患有RHD的成年人来说，上下文不适当解释的激活会持续更长时间，并且预示着语篇理解能力较差。本研究将比曼的激活失败假说与患有RHD的成年人在文本理解中会产生多种解释的预测进行了对比。还研究了这组人群中与文本不兼容推理的激活和语篇理解之间的关系。37名患有RHD的成年人和34名无脑部损伤的成年人听取了简短的叙述，这些叙述需要进行搭桥推理（BI）来整合文本的最后一句话。这句话在脱离文本单独呈现时，强烈倾向于一种与上下文不兼容的替代解释（AI）。在每篇文本的起始句和结尾句之后，立即呈现听觉音素串以进行词汇判断。患有RHD的成年人在对结尾句位置与BI相关的目标词进行词汇判断时，比在起始句位置更快且更准确。因此，与激活失败假说相反，患有RHD的成年人在文本需要时能够产生BI的词汇语义基础。在准确性数据中也明显存在AI生成，但在反应时间数据中则不然。这一结果部分与多重激活观点一致。最后，上下文不兼容解释的更大激活与患有RHD的成年人较差的语篇理解表现相关。
