Linguistic, extralinguistic and paralinguistic abilities in patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD)

Patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD) often show communicative-pragmatic deficits involving different expressive modalities, i.e. linguistic, extralinguistic and paralinguistic. Most previous research has evaluated pragmatic ability using linguistic tasks only, while the extralinguistic aspects of communication have received less attention. The aim of the present study was to provide a multifocal assessment of communicative abilities in RHD patients, describing their communicative impairment and abilities, both in comprehension and production. The study revealed communicative deficits in RHD patients in all the expressive modalities investigated, i.e. linguistic, extralinguistic and paralinguistic, with patients performing worse in extralinguistic tasks than in linguistic tasks.