Cognitive risk-taking after frontal or temporal lobectomy—II. The synthesis of phonemic and semantic information

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Abstract

Patients with unilateral cerebral excisions and control subjects performed two tasks in which target words had to be guessed on the basis of either phonemic or semantic partial-information clues. Each cumulatively provided clue was assigned successively lower point-value, these points being risked whenever the subject responded. Patients with frontal-lobe excisions chose to make a guess after seeing only one clue more often than did a combined group of subjects without frontal-lobe damage, but this guessing-score was also related to extent of right temporal-lobe removal. Patients with left temporal-lobe or left fronta-lobe lesions had difficulty solving the clues, occasionally failing to recognize that a response generated in the context of one clue satisfied all the clues.

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