Foldi N S
Brain Lang. 1987 May;31(1):88-108. doi: 10.1016/0093-934x(87)90062-9.
Indirect commands can elicit "literal" interpretations, directly reflecting the content and form of the utterance, or "pragmatic" interpretations, incorporating knowledge of paralinguistic, social, or historical cues. The aim of this study was to demonstrate how right brain-damaged (RBD) subjects would perform on judgments of these forms of communication. It was predicted that relative to normal controls or aphasic subjects, the RBD subjects would have significant difficulty appreciating the pragmatic interpretation relative to the literal one. Subjects judged the appropriateness of two-part exchanges consisting of indirect commands, direct commands, Wh-questions coupled with pragmatic responses, literal responses, responses verifying the physical surround, or syntactically similar responses. The results confirm that the RBD subjects had a selective difficulty appreciating the indirect commands. Their preference of literal over pragmatic interpretations was significantly different to that of aphasics or normal controls. Hypotheses are offered to explain these data.
间接指令能够引发“字面”解释，即直接反映话语的内容和形式，或者引发“语用”解释，即纳入副语言、社会或历史线索等知识。本研究的目的是证明右脑损伤（RBD）患者在对这些交流形式的判断上会有怎样的表现。据预测，相对于正常对照组或失语症患者，RBD患者在理解语用解释相对于字面解释时会有显著困难。受试者判断由间接指令、直接指令、带有语用回应的特殊疑问句、字面回应、核实物理环境的回应或句法相似的回应组成的两部分交流的恰当性。结果证实，RBD患者在理解间接指令方面存在选择性困难。他们对字面解释而非语用解释的偏好与失语症患者或正常对照组有显著差异。本文提出了一些假设来解释这些数据。
