Ann Rehabil Med.  2013 Oct;37(5):642-648. 10.5535/arm.2013.37.5.642.

Prosody Processing of Korean Language in Stroke Patients: A Preliminary Study

• Ju HI
• Shin YW
• Han SH
• Kim JS
• Choi HY
• Lee HS
• Yang T
• Shin JH

• KMID: 2266581
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.5535/arm.2013.37.5.642

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the hemispheric contributions to prosody recognitions and interference effects of semantic processing on prosody for stroke patients by using the Korean language.
METHODS
Ten right hemisphere damaged patients (RHD), nine left hemisphere damaged patients (LHD), and eleven healthy controls (HC) participated. In pure prosody recognition task, four semantically neutral sentences were selected and presented in both sad and happy prosodies. In interference task, participants listened to emotionally intoned sentences in which the semantic contents were congruent or incongruent with prosody. Participants were asked to rate the valence of prosody while ignoring the semantic contents, and thus, reaction time and accuracy were estimated.
RESULTS
In pure prosody recognition task, RHD showed low accuracy as compared to HC (p=0.013), and the tendency of group response showed that RHD performed worse than HC and LHD with regards to accuracy and reaction time. In interference task, analysis of accuracy revealed a significant main effect of groups (p=0.04), and the tendency implied that RHD is less accurate as compared to LHD and HC. The RHD took longer reaction times than HC in congruent and incongruent items (p<0.001).
CONCLUSION
Right hemispheric laterality to prosody processing of Korean language in stroke patients was observed. Interference effects of semantic contents to prosody processing were not observed, which suggested unique characteristics of prosody for Korean language. These results could be referred as preliminary data for future researches on Korean languages.

Keyword

Speech disorders; Speech perception; Functional laterality; Stroke

MeSH Terms

Functional Laterality
Humans
Reaction Time
Semantics
Speech Disorders
Speech Perception
Stroke*

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Procedure of interference task.

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  Fig. 2 (A) Accuracy with 95% confidence interval (CI) bars and (B) reaction time with 95% CI bars in pure prosody recognition task. RHD, right hemisphere damaged patients; LHD, left hemisphere damaged patients; HC, healthy controls. *p=0.013, significantly different according to Mann-Whitney U test.

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  Fig. 3 Accuracy with 95% confidence interval bars of (A) congruent item and (B) incongruent item in interference task. RHD, right hemisphere damaged patients; LHD, left hemisphere damaged patients; HC, healthy controls.

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  Fig. 4 Reaction time with 95% confidence interval bars of congruent items (A) and incongruent items (B) in interference task. RHD, right hemisphere damaged patients; LHD, left hemisphere damaged patients; HC, healthy controls. *p<0.001, significantly different according to Mann-Whitney U test.

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