The right hemisphere can understand broad and implicit meaning, while the left only understands explicit literal meaning
The right hemisphere’s particular strength in comprehension is in understanding meaning as a whole and in context. It is with the right hemisphere that we understand the moral of a story, as well as the point of a joke. It is able to construe intelligently what others mean, determining from intonation, and from pragmatics, not just from summation of meaning units, subject to the combinatorial rules of syntax, as a computer would. It is therefore particularly important wherever non-literal meaning needs to be understood – practically everywhere, therefore, in human discourse, and particularly where irony, humour, indirection or sarcasm are involved.
Patients with right hemisphere damage have difficulty understanding non-literal meaning. They have difficulty with indirect meaning, such as is implied by metaphor and humour. In fact, those with right hemisphere damage cannot make inferences, an absolutely vital part of understanding the world: they do not understand implicit meanings whatever their kind, but detect explicit meanings only. Once an inference is made and begins to be more explicit, the process can be transferred from the right superior temporal gyrus to the left. While syntactical performance is more impaired in left hemisphere damaged children, actual lexical understanding is worse impaired by right hemisphere damage.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (p. 145). London, UK: Yale University Press.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️