The Effects of Stroke on the Comprehension of Affective and Nonaffective Prosody

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of stroke on the comprehension of prosody. Thirty two inpatient volunteers (16 with right hemisphere and 16 with left hemisphere stroke) and 16 controls participated in the study. A 3(Group) x 2(Gender) x 2(Task) mixed design was used. The independent variables were the subject group, gender and the prosody task (affective or nonaffective). The dependent variables were the percentage of correct responses to the affective and nonaffective prosody tasks. A 3(Group) x 2(Gender) x 2(Task) AN0VA revealed a significant main effect for group, E<2, 48) = 21.46, p<.0001. Subjects with right hemisphere stroke performed more poorly than either the left hemisphere stroke group or the control group. Subjects with left hemisphere stroke performed significantly worse than the control group. Correlational analyses performed on seer-es of prosody tasks, subject age, days post-stroke, and seer-es on a mood scale and on a handedness questionnaire revealed a significant correlation between the prosody tasks, r= • 79, Q.< .0001.