ERIC Number: ED243333
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1983-Nov
Pages: 24
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Lateralization of Auditory Language: An EEG Study of Bilingual Crow Indian Adolescents.
Vocate, Donna R.
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) overall linguistic processing would be bilateral; (2) during the Crow language receptive condition, right hemisphere lateralization would occur; and (3) during the English language condition, left hemisphere lateralization would occur for receptive language processing. Subjects were 11 Crow Indians determined to be balanced Crow-English bilinguals attending high school on a Montana reservation. The subjects listened to tapes of the same content in Crow and in English while undergoing EEG. Results showed no significant difference in lateralization for receptive processing of English, but a highly significant left lateralization was found for Crow, contradicting other lateralization studies of Native American languages. Although a slight left lateralization existed for the total proportion score for English, an effect emerged during a time-sequence examination of the 80-second epochs, in which the English language processing was initially lateralized to the right hemisphere but became progressively more lateralized to the left. Possible explanations include differential involvement of hemispheres for different English structures. (MSE)
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A