Suppression and narrative time shifts in right hemisphere brain damage

Scharp, Victoria L. and Tompkins, Dr. Connie (2012) Suppression and narrative time shifts in right hemisphere brain damage. [Clinical Aphasiology Paper]

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Abstract

Narrative comprehension is vital to socializing and everyday communication. Understanding references to time is fundamental to comprehending the context and order of events within a narrative. This study examined the functioning of a central comprehension mechanism, suppression1,2, in narratives that cue a shift in timeframe in individuals with right hemisphere brain damage (RHD). The timeframe in normal narrative processing is assumed to be continuous3-4. Shifts in the timeframe of events trigger the suppression mechanism, which reduces a comprehender’s mental activation of information that was processed before the time shift. When the timeframe of a narrative is disrupted (e.g., something happens “an hour later”), information that was mentally active before the time shift becomes less relevant and is suppressed. Suppression is a general comprehension mechanism that acts across language levels and domains (e,g, words, sentences, narratives, etc.)1,5. Based on evidence of RHD suppression deficit in lexical ambiguity processing6-7, it was predicted that adults with RHD would also have difficulty suppressing information from a prior timeframe following a shift in narrative timeline. In addition, we predicted a correlation between suppression and narrative comprehension, as reported previously for young normal comprehenders1-2,5 and adults with RHD6.

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