Brownell H H, Simpson T L, Bihrle A M, Potter H H, Gardner H
Boston College, MA.
Neuropsychologia. 1990;28(4):375-83. doi: 10.1016/0028-3932(90)90063-t.
Appreciation of metaphoric and nonmetaphoric alternative word meanings was assessed in 19 aphasic, left (LHD) and 15 non-aphasic, right (RHD) hemisphere brain-damaged stroke patients. With the one exception in the aphasic group, all patients were male. In an unspeeded sorting task, subjects responded on the basis of less frequent, alternative meanings of polysemous target words. Targets were either polysemous adjectives (e.g. "warm") having metaphoric alternative meanings (loving) or polysemous nouns (e.g., "pen") having non-metaphoric alternative meanings (writing implement, cage). Both patient groups performed worse overall than a group of nonbrain-damaged control subjects. Relative to the RHD patients, LHD patients showed a spared appreciation of metaphoric alternative meanings. In addition, LHD, but not RHD, patients performed better on metaphoric adjective trials when there was high similarity between a word's dominant and (metaphoric) alternative meaning. The results suggest a pervasive insensitivity of RHD patients to alternative interpretations of linguistic units, and a special role for the intact right hemisphere in lexical-semantic processes related to metaphor comprehension.
对19名失语的左侧大脑半球损伤（LHD）和15名非失语的右侧大脑半球损伤（RHD）中风患者进行了隐喻性和非隐喻性替代词义理解能力的评估。除失语组有一个例外，所有患者均为男性。在一项无时间限制的分类任务中，受试者根据多义词目标词不常见的替代词义做出反应。目标词要么是具有隐喻性替代词义（如“热情的”）的多义形容词（如“温暖的”），要么是具有非隐喻性替代词义（书写工具、围栏）的多义名词（如“笔”）。两个患者组的总体表现均不如一组非脑损伤对照受试者。相对于RHD患者，LHD患者对隐喻性替代词义的理解能力得以保留。此外，当一个词的显性意义和（隐喻性）替代意义高度相似时，LHD患者（而非RHD患者）在隐喻性形容词试验中的表现更好。结果表明，RHD患者对语言单位的替代解释普遍不敏感，而完整的右半球在与隐喻理解相关的词汇语义过程中发挥着特殊作用。
