THE USE OF CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION BY RIGHT BRAIN-DAMAGED INDIVIDUALS IN THE RESOLUTION OF AMBIGUOUS PRONOUNS

Two experiments were conducted with the primary purpose of investigati ng the ability of right brain-damaged (RED) individuals to use context ual information-at the level of the single sentence, in terms of the i ntegration of information between clauses, and at the level of a minim al discourse (i.e., two sentences)-in the resolution of ambiguous pron ouns. The investigation was extended to a group of left brain-damaged (LED) and non-brain-damaged (NBD) individuals. Contrary to the prevail ing view that RED patients have difficulty in the use of contextual in formation to process language, both experiments were consistent in dem onstrating that the RED group was influenced by contextual information in a manner similar to that demonstrated by both the LED and NBD grou ps. (C) 1997 Academic Press.