Five theories were tested relating to the suspected connection between organic brain dysfunction and poor reading, or dyslexia. Results failed to support the poor lateralization, right hemisphere, global, imbalance theories. Among juvenile offenders, poor reading appears to relate to left-hemisphere dysfunction. (Author)

The Wada test is at present the method of choice for preoperative assessment of patients who require surgery close to cortical language areas. It is, however, an invasive test with an attached morbidity risk. By now, an alternative to the Wada test is to combine a lexical word generation paradigm with non-invasive imaging techniques. However,…

Both right-and left-handed normally developing 6-year-olds showed considerable evidence of bilateralization of hemispheric functions for spatial and verbal information processing; the slowly developing children (ages 5-9) exhibited unusual patterns of hemispheric specialization usually opposite those typically expected in children or adults.…

Two findings serve as the hallmark for hemispheric specialization during lateralized lexical decision. First is an overall word advantage, with words being recognized more quickly and accurately than non-words (the effect being stronger in response latency). Second, a right visual field advantage is observed for words, with little or no…

Whether intuitive abilities can be improved through purposeful training for a more holistic approach to education was the object of this study. It was hypothesized that individuals participating in a mental training program designed to improve right-brain intuitive abilities would show significant improvement in such abilities, while a control…

Examined the hypothesis that aging and hemispheric laterality interact to produce relatively greater decrements in older individuals in right hemispheric dominant (visuospatial) than left hemispheric dominant (verbal) tasks in 24 early middle-aged and 24 older males. Data did not support the notion of a laterality effect associated with aging.…

Left- and right-handed second-grade, sixth-grade, and college students were compared on four subtests of the Torrance creativity test. At each level, left-handed students had higher creativity scores than right-handers. The greatest differences were found on the elaboration subtests. (Author/RL)

Three studies examined how children of different ages and cultural backgrounds represent depth relations of near and far, and front and behind, on a two-dimensional surface. A lateral bias to place near objects on the left side appeared in English and Hebrew readers of all ages and in older Arabic readers. (MM)

A study was undertaken to learn whether involvement of the brain's right hemisphere in auditory language processing, a phenomenon found in a previous study of Crow-English bilinguals, was language-specific. Alpha blocking response as measured by electroencephalography (EEG) was used as an indicator of brain activity. It was predicted that (1)…

A study of differential brain hemisphere involvement in second language acquisition is reported. The study examined the idea that the right hemisphere is progressively more involved the later the second language is acquired. Various techniques for monitoring hemispheric functioning are described, especially the Evoked Potential (EP) technique. In…

Retinoid signaling has been recently shown to be required for mnemonic functions in rodents. To dissect the behavioral and molecular mechanisms involved in this requirement, we have analyzed the spatial and recognition working memory in mice carrying null mutations of retinoid receptors RAR[subscript [beta]] and RXR[subscript [gamma]]. Double…

Examination of existing empirical and theoretical literature suggests there is no conclusive support for the existence of a critical period for human speech learning. Assumption of a critical period may inhibit the search for testable hypotheses concerning observed adult-child differences in second language production. (Author/LMO)