Abstract:
Left hemisphere brain-damaged, right hemisphere brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged controls viewed four videotaped vignettes portraying four different emotions (e.g. neutral, inappropriate happiness, inappropriate anger and sadness). Each of the vignettes was followed by a questionnaire which tested the subjects recall of the emotional, and some non-emotional, content. Additionally all subjects had continuous galvanic skin response recordings taken from the hand ipsilateral to injury during the entire testing session. Left hemisphere brain-damaged subjects and right hemisphere brain-damaged subjects displayed impaired performance on the postvignette questionnaires. Control subjects performance was the highest. Left hemisphere brain-damaged subjects had the greatest increase in GSR from baseline levels for all scenes. The right hemisphere brain-damaged and control subjects remained stable at or around baseline levels.