Comparison of emotional and non-emotional word repetitions in patients with aphasia

Authors
Jalal Bakhtiyari 1
Seyyed Ahmad Reza Khatoonabadi 1
Hooshang Dadgar 1
Behrooz Mahmoodi Bakhtiari 2
Parvaneh Khosravizadeh 3
Vahid Shaygannejad 4
1 Department of Speech Therapy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3 Languages and Linguistics Center, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
4 Isfahan Neurosciences Research Center, Alzahra Hospital, Department of Neurology, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
Background: Aphasia is a language disorder caused by left hemisphere damage. For treatment of aphasia, in some of therapeutic approaches, the right hemisphere (RH) abilities, such as, emotional perception, is used for stimulation of the language process in the left hemisphere. The aim of this study is to investigate emotional word repetition in aphasia after a stroke, in Persian language patients.
Materials and Methods: Fifteen aphasic patients (eleven male and four female) between 45 and 65 (58/4 ± 7/8) years of age, participated in this cross-sectional study. A list of 20 emotional words and a list of 20 neutral words as stimuli were prepared and the patients were asked to repeat each word after five seconds; if a patient needed to repeat a word again, it was repeated for him/her again, and the total score for each subject was calculated. The paired t-test was used to test group mean differences and the significant level was 0.05.
Results: The mean and standard deviation for emotional word repetitions were 6.93 ± 1.72 and for non-emotional word repetition was 7.10 ± 2.23, and the P value = 0.892, thus, no significant difference between emotional and non-emotional word repetitions was noticed. The mean and standard deviation for the positive emotional word repetitions were 3.53 ± 3.29 and for negative word repetitions were 3.40 ± 3.56, (P = 0.751), with no significant difference between positive and negative emotional word repetitions.
Conclusion: Despite the main hypothesis that the right hemisphere is involved in the processing of emotions, it can be stated that both hemispheres are involved in the processing of emotional words, albeit in a different and probably complementary manner.

Keywords

1.
Chapey R. Language Intervention Strategies in Aphasia and Related Neurogenic Communication Disorders. 5 th ed. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins; 2008. p. 5-9.  Back to cited text no. 1
    
2.
Lapointe LL. Aphasia and Related Neurogenic Language Disorders. New York: Thieme; 2006. p. 8-10.  Back to cited text no. 2
    
3.
Scarpa M, Colombo A, Sorgato P, De Renzi E. The incidence of aphasia and global aphasia in left brain-damaged patients. Cortex 1987;23:331-6.  Back to cited text no. 3
    
4.
Doesborgh SJ, van de Sandt-Koenderman MW, Dippel DW, van Harskamp F, Koudstaal PJ, Visch-Brink EG. Effects of semantic treatment on verbal communication and linguistic processing in aphasia after stroke: A randomized controlled trial. Stroke 2004;35:141-6.  Back to cited text no. 4
    
5.
Kauhanen ML, Korpelainen JT, Hiltunen P, Määttä R, Mononen H, Brusin E, et al. Aphasia, depression, and non-verbal cognitive impairment in ischaemic stroke. Cerebrovasc Dis 2000;10:455-61.  Back to cited text no. 5
    
6.
Basso A. Aphasia and its Therapy (Medicine). New York: Oxford University Press; 2003.  Back to cited text no. 6
    
7.
York GK 3 rd , Steinberg DA. Hughlings Jackson's neurological ideas. Brain 2011;134:3106-13.  Back to cited text no. 7
    
8.
Abernethy M, Coney J. Associative priming in the hemispheres as a function of SOA. Neuropsychologia 1993;31:1397-409.  Back to cited text no. 8
    
9.
Abernethy M, Coney J. Semantic category priming in the left cerebral hemisphere. Neuropsychologia 1996;34:339-50.  Back to cited text no. 9
    
10.
Abbassi E, Kahlaoui K, Wilson MA, Joanette Y. Processing the emotions in words: The complementary contributions of the left and right hemispheres. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 2011;11:372-85.  Back to cited text no. 10
    
11.
Ramsberger G. Repetition of emotional and nonemotional words in aphasia. J Med Speech Lang Pathol 1996;4:1-12.  Back to cited text no. 11
    
12.
 Hassani H. Contemporary high frequency words in Persian. Iranian Language Institute 2005.  Back to cited text no. 12
    
13.
Reuterskiöld C. The effects of emotionality on auditory comprehension in aphasia. Cortex 1991;27:595-604.  Back to cited text no. 13
    
14.
Landis T. Emotional words: What's so different from just words? Cortex 2006;42:823-30.  Back to cited text no. 14
    
15.
Mandal MK, Harizuka S, Bhushan B, Mishra RC. Cultural variation in hemifacial asymmetry of emotion expressions. Br J Soc Psychol 2001;40:385-98.  Back to cited text no. 15
    
16.
Bann EY, Bryson JJ. Measuring cultural relativity of emotional valence and arousal using semantic clustering and twitter. Washington: Cognitive Science Society; 2013. p. 1809-14.  Back to cited text no. 16
    
17.
Wilce JM. Language and emotion. London: Cambridge University Press; 2009. p.111-5.  Back to cited text no. 17
Advanced Biomedical Research
Volume 2015, August
August 2015
Pages 1-4