Receptive prosodic processing in aphasia

The aim of this study was to systematically investigate the capacity of aphasic patients in the comprehension of emotional, conversational, and linguistic prosody in relation to the degree of severity of aphasia. In order to make a contribution to an ongoing discussion about the role of the two cerebral hemispheres in prosodic processing, we compared the results of the left-hemisphere-damaged aphasic group with those of a group of right-hemisphere-damaged patients. We found deficits in both patient groups, but with different profiles across tasks: The processing of emphatic stress was significantly impaired in the aphasic group, but relatively spared in the patients with lesions to the right hemisphere. On the other hand, relatively good performance by the aphasic patients and significantly inferior results from the right hemisphere damaged patients were found in the processing of emotional and conversational prosodic information. The disturbances found in the left hemisphere group were independent of the severity of aphasic impairment.