The role of emotion in the linguistics and pragmatic aspects of aphasic performance

Considerations of aphasies' performance typically focus on aspects of linguistic impairment. Similarly, researchers tend to emphasize right brain-damaged subjects' relatively poor performance in response to emotional content or context. The spared or heightened emotional abilities of aphasic communication often go unnoticed. Research will be reviewed which suggests that aphasics have the ability to successfully utilize emotion in the comprehension and expression of both linguistic and pragmatic content and contexts. Evidence from a wide range of research on lexical processing, prosody, and discourse will be reviewed which indicates that emotion may play a facilitatory role in the comprehension and production of communication in language-impaired people. A large group study involving 15 left brain-damaged, 12 right brain-damaged and 16 normal controls was carried out to investigate posed and spontaneous emotional expression and perception, including the vocal and verbal, as well as facial, channels for spontaneous expression. Results will be considered with respect to the neuropsychological organization of linguistic and emotional cognitive systems.