Practice question · Multiple choice
A patient with right-hemisphere damage speaks in perfect grammar and cannot tell when someone is being sarcastic. What does that dissociation add to the picture of language?
Hints
- The grammar is intact. Ask what is missing from a sentence when only the words survive.
- 'Oh, brilliant' can be praise or contempt. What carries the difference?
Show the answer
C. That the right hemisphere handles prosody and intent
Why
Words are left-lateralised and what a speaker is doing with them is not. Tone, timing and the mismatch between literal content and situation are largely right-hemisphere work, which is why the left-brain/right-brain caricature fails from both directions, and why these patients find conversation exhausting.
Practise Hemispheric Lateralization
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More questions on Hemispheric Lateralization
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