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Right Hemisphere Language Operations

Right Hemisphere Language Comprehension. Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience. M. Beeman and C. Chiarello (Eds.). 1998. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 408 pp. $89.95, HB, $39.95, PB.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2000

Lee X. Blonder
Affiliation:
Department of Behavioral Science and the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky College of Medicine,101 Sanders-Brown Building, Lexington, KY 40536-0230

Abstract

This book contains an introduction by the editors and 15 chapters that are divided into three parts. Part I is entitled “Decoding Speech Sounds and Individual Words”; part II: “Lexical and Sentence-Level Semantics”; and Part III: “Discourse Processing and Problem Solving.” Each part concludes with a commentary by the editors. As these section titles show, the book provides evidence that the right hemisphere is involved with functions more commonly ascribed to the left hemisphere, namely, phonology, morphology, and semantics. In addition, several chapters are devoted to aspects of communicative competence commonly associated with right hemisphere specialization, such as discourse comprehension and the appreciation of emotional verbal messages. Previous works, such as Language, Aphasia, and the Right Hemisphere by Chris Code (1987), provide a more basic introduction to what was then known of right hemisphere communicative competence. The Beeman and Chiarello volume is directed towards a more sophisticated target audience familiar with neurolinguistic models of hemispheric contributions to language comprehension.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2000 The International Neuropsychological Society

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