Elsevier

Brain and Language

Volume 9, Issue 2, March 1980, Pages 206-214
Brain and Language

Recognition and discrimination of emotional faces and pictures

https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(80)90141-8Get rights and content

Abstract

In order to learn whether patients with right-hemisphere disease (RHD) had a deficit in their ability to discriminate and comprehend emotional faces and pictures, we studied nine patients with RHD, nine patients with left-hemisphere disease (LHD), and nine controls. The subjects were presented with six picture tests that comprised either emotional faces or emotional scenes. Their task was either to denote (name or choose) an emotion or to discriminate (same, different) between two faces or emotions. Patients with RHD performed significantly worse than subjects with LHD when asked to discriminate between faces, to discriminate between emotional faces, and to name emotional scenes. There was also a trend for the RHD group to be more impaired than the LHD group when asked to name the emotional face or choose the emotional face. Except for the facial and emotional discrimination tests, the LHD patients also performed worse than controls.

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This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grant 5 RO1 NS12218-01 A2. This paper was presented, in part to the World Federation of Neurology, Research Group of Aphasiology, Iowa City, Iowa, October 13, 1978.

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