Comparison of Narrative Discourse Production Using Correct Information Units (CIUs) in Individuals with Unilateral Brain Damage

The aim of this study is to compare the narrative discourse production differences in adults with right hemisphere damage (RHD) and aphasia resulting from left hemisphere damage, using measures of CIUs (total # CIUs, CIUs/Minute, and %CIUs) to better understand the language difficulties experienced by individuals with unilateral brain damage on both the microlinguistic and macrolinguistic levels of discourse. We hypothesize that individuals with aphasia will perform lower on all measures of CIUs analyzed compared to individuals with RHD. To test this hypothesis, narrative discourse samples of 15 aphasic individuals and 15 individuals with RHD from the TalkBank Database were analyzed using CLAN. Results from this analysis show that individuals with aphasia performed lower on all measures of CIUs, indicating that their narrative discourse performance was poorer, less accurate, relevant, informative, and on topic, compared to the individuals with RHD.