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Biomedical subjects

R L Bloom

Publications and source records attributed to R L Bloom.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Verbal pragmatics following unilateral stroke: emotional content and valence.

Verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production were examined in 16 right brain-damaged (RBD), 16 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 normal control right-handed adults. The facilitation effect of emotional content, valence hypothesis, and relationship between pragmatics and emotion were evaluated. Participants produced monologues while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Transcribed monologues were rated for appropriateness on 6 pragmatic features: conciseness, lexical selection, quantity, relevancy, specificity, and topic maintenance. Overall, brain-damaged groups were rated as significantly less appropriate than normals. Consistent with the facilitation effect, emotional content enhanced pragmatic performance of LBD aphasic participants yet suppressed performance of RBD participants. Contrary to the valence hypothesis, RBD participants were more impaired for positive emotions and LBD participants for negative emotions. Pragmatic appropriateness was not strongly correlated with a measure of emotional intensity.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Psychometric aspects of verbal pragmatic ratings.

This study examined the psychometric aspects of a verbal pragmatic rating scale. The scale contained six pragmatic features (i.e., Conciseness, Lexical Selection, Quantity, Relevancy, Specificity, and Topic Maintenance) based on Grice's cooperative principles. Fifteen right brain-damaged (RBD), 15 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 healthy normal control (NC) right-handed adult participants produced narratives while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Naive raters evaluated each pragmatic feature for appropriateness on a 5-point Likert scale. When reliability was examined, the overall internal consistency of the pragmatic scale was extremely high (alpha =.96). Factor analysis was conducted to examine the theoretical relations among the six pragmatic features. Three meaningful factors involving discourse content, conceptual unity, and parsimony were identified. Findings are discussed in light of Grice's model and the construct validity of the scale.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Hemispheric specialization for discourse reports of emotional experiences: relationships to demographic, neurological, and perceptual variables.

This study examined hemispheric specialization for discourse reports of emotional and nonemotional experience in 16 right-brain-damaged (RBD), 16 left-brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 demographically-matched normal control (NC) right-handed adults. Patient groups did not differ on etiology, months post-CVA onset, and intrahemispheric lesion location. Subjects were requested to produce monologues about positive and negative emotional and nonemotional experiences. The lexical content of written transcriptions of these monologues was later rated for "emotionality" by naive judges. Overall, RBDs described experiences with less emotional intensity than did NCs and LBDs, providing support for right hemisphere involvement in lexical emotion. Although the RBDs in the current study demonstrated similar patterns of deficits in a prior study [9] on tasks involving lexical emotional perception, there were no significant relationships between the current measures of emotional expression and the previous measures of emotional perception. Finally, the expression and the perception data were examined with respect to intrahemispheric factors. Among the brain-damaged subjects, subcortical structures were more involved in reports of emotional experience, and cortical structures were more involved in the perception of emotion.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1996

Gender differences in children's intonational patterns.

This study investigated differences among intonational variables in prepubescent girls' and boys' voices in conversational speech (American-English). Subjects were middle class boys and girls at each of four age levels: 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10 years. Samples of conversational speech were recorded and acoustically analyzed for minimum and maximum FO, mean FO, and SD of FO (FOSD), as well as number and direction of FO changes ("shifts") per utterance. Findings indicated that the mean FO of the males decreased at around age 7-8 years. Additionally, maximum FO, range, and percentage of rising and falling shifts all showed decreases for the males starting at ages 7-8 not paralleled by decreases for the females. Both physiological and sociocultural factors appear to account for the changes that mark the development of intonational patterns in prepubertal girls and boys.

Child↗
PubMed1996

Left and right hemispheric contributions to discourse coherence and cohesion.

Linguistic coherence and cohesion were examined in patients with unilateral left brain damage (LBD), unilateral right brain damage (RBD), and normal control (NC) right-handed adults. Groups were matched for age, gender, occupation, and education. Brain-damaged groups did not differ for months post onset or intrahemispheric lesion site. Contrary to previous literature, results indicated that LBDs, all of whom were aphasic, demonstrated impairments in coherence but not cohesion, relative to NCs and RBDs. Surprisingly, among RBDs, overall coherence and cohesion were spared. When the relationship between measures of coherence and cohesion was examined, there were few significant correlations and no systematic patterns. Results support the notion that coherence and cohesion represent coexisting and independent linguistic systems. Further, the findings suggest that descriptions of discourse integrity need to account for the perspective of both the speaker and listener.

Aged↗
PubMed1993

Suppression and facilitation of pragmatic performance: effects of emotional content on discourse following right and left brain damage.

This study examines the effect of emotional content on the verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production in right-brain-damaged (RBD), left-brain-damaged (LBD), and normal control (NC) right-handed adults. Subject groups were matched for gender, age, education, and occupation; brain-damaged groups did not differ on months post CVA onset and lesion location. Subjects were screened to ensure that they demonstrated adequate cognitive and visual perceptual skills to participate in the study. Pictorial stimuli were used to elicit discourse that contained emotional and nonemotional (procedural, visuospatial) content. Trained raters evaluated each discourse for appropriateness on seven verbal pragmatic features (e.g., conciseness, quantity, relevancy). Across all three conditions, the brain-damaged groups were impaired relative to NCs. In the nonemotional conditions, LBDs were particularly impaired in pragmatics, whereas in the emotional condition, RBDs demonstrated pragmatic deficits. Emotional content appeared to facilitate pragmatic performance among LBD aphasics and to suppress pragmatic performance among RBDs.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1992

Impact of emotional content on discourse production in patients with unilateral brain damage.

A picture story task was developed to examine expression of emotion via the verbal/lexical channel. The task elicited discourse with either emotional, visual-spatial, or neutral content and was administered to right brain-damaged (RBD), left brain-damaged (LBD), and normal control (NC) right-handed adults. Subjects were matched for gender, age, education, and occupational status. The brain-damaged groups were matched for months post-CVA onset and were similar with respect to intrahemispheric site of lesion. While the number of words produced was equivalent for each of the subject groups, the RBDs and LBDs expressed quantitatively less content than did the NCs. When content differences were examined within each subject group, there were no differences for LBDs and NCs, but the RBDs showed a selective deficit when producing emotional content. This finding suggests a special role for the right hemisphere in the production of emotional content in verbal discourse.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

A preliminary characterization of lexical emotional expression in right and left brain-damaged patients.

Disorders in nonverbal communication of emotion have been documented in patients with right hemisphere pathology; lexical expression of emotion is virtually unstudied. In this preliminary investigation, emotionally laden slides were used to elicit discourse from right brain-damaged (RBD), left brain-damaged (LBD), and normal control (NC) subjects. New techniques were developed to examine the ability of these subjects to express emotion in words; formalistic and pragmatic analyses of the discourse were conducted. RBDs, relative to NCs and LBDs, were less successful in using words to convey emotion and produced words of lower emotional intensity. LBD aphasics, despite their linguistic deficits, were comparable to NCs in conveying emotional valence. The data tend to support the speculation that the right hemisphere is dominant for lexical expression of emotion. This study has implications for the neuropsychological investigation of language, emotion, and the brain.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1983

Treatment of six cases of mesothelioma with doxorubicin and cisplatin.

Six patients with unresectable malignant mesothelioma were treated with chemotherapy consisting of doxorubicin and cisplatin every 3 weeks. One patient with paratesticular mesothelioma metastatic to lungs entered complete remission for 8 months; his disease has relapsed but he is alive 32 months after initiation of chemotherapy. One patient with peritoneal mesothelioma achieved partial response for 12 months. Two patients with pleural mesothelioma achieved a partial response of 5- and 6-month durations, respectively. Two patients with pleural mesothelioma failed to respond to this regimen. Thus, four of six patients responded to doxorubicin-cisplatin chemotherapy. These preliminary results merit further study and confirmation; future investigations of cisplatin alone are necessary to better define the role of this agent in mesothelioma.

Adult↗