Difference between the brain's hemispheres in efficiency of intentional search of the mental lexicon with phonological, orthographic, and semantic strategies was investigated. Letter strings for lexical decision were presented at fixation, with a lateralized distractor to the LVF or RVF. Word results revealed that both hemispheres were capable of…

It is widely believed that advantages of hemispheric asymmetries originated in better cognitive processing, hence it is often implied that the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance is linearly positive: the higher the degree of lateralization in a specific cognitive domain, the better the performance in a…

The present study examined the relationship between individual differences in dichotic listening (DL) and the susceptibility to left-right confusion (LRC). Thirty-six men and 59 women completed a consonant-vowel DL test, a behavioral LRC task, and an LRC self-rating questionnaire. Significant negative correlations between overall DL accuracy and…

Since about two decades neuroscientists have systematically faced the problem of consciousness: the aim is to discover the neural activity specifically related to conscious perceptions, i.e. the biological properties of what philosophers call qualia. In this view, a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) is a precise pattern of brain activity…

Purpose: This study sought to compare dichotic right-ear advantages (REAs) of young adults to older adult data (C. M. Roup, T. L. Wiley, & R. H. Wilson, 2006) after matching for overall levels of recognition performance. Specifically, speech-spectrum noise was introduced in order to reduce dichotic recognition performance of young adults to a…

Motor overflow refers to involuntary movement or muscle activity that may coincide with voluntary movement. This study examined factors influencing motor overflow in 17 children (8-11 years), and 17 adults (18-35 years). Participants performed a finger pressing task by exerting either 33% or 66% of their maximal force output using their dominant…

The individual roles played by the cerebral hemispheres during the process of language comprehension have been extensively studied in tasks that require individuals to read text (for review see Jung-Beeman, 2005). However, it is not clear whether or not some aspects of the theorized laterality models of semantic comprehension are a result of the…

People with autism show attenuated cerebral lateralisation for emotion processing. Given growing appreciation of the notion that autism represents a continuum, the present study aimed to determine whether atypical hemispheric lateralisation is evident in people with normal but above average levels of autism-like traits. One hundred and…

Perceptual asymmetries for tasks involving aesthetic preference or line bisection can be affected by asymmetrical neurological mechanisms or left/right reading habits. This study investigated the relative contribution of these mechanisms in 100 readers of Japanese and English. Participants made aesthetic judgments between pairs of mirror-reversed…

The best established lateralized cerebral function is speech production, with the majority of the population having left hemisphere dominance. An important question is how to best assess the laterality of this function. Neuroimaging techniques such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) are increasingly used in clinical settings to…

Through study of clinical cases with brain lesions as well as neuroimaging studies of cognitive processing of words and pictures, it has been established that material-specific hemispheric specialization exists. It remains however unclear whether such specialization holds true for all processes involved in complex tasks, such as recognition…

Several studies have shown that handedness has an impact on visual spatial abilities. Here we investigated the effect of laterality on auditory space perception. Participants (33 right-handers, 20 left-handers) completed two tasks of sound localization. In a dark, anechoic, and sound-proof room, sound stimuli (broadband noise) were presented via…

Through computational modeling, here we examine whether visual and task characteristics of writing systems alone can account for lateralization differences in visual word recognition between different languages without assuming influence from left hemisphere (LH) lateralized language processes. We apply a hemispheric processing model of face…

Dichotic listening originally was a means of studying attention. Half a century ago Doreen Kimura parlayed the dichotic method into a noninvasive indicator of lateralized cerebral language representation. The ubiquitous right-ear advantage (REA) for verbal material was accepted as a concomitant of left-sided language lateralization and…

This report presents evidence for changes in dichotic listening asymmetries across the menstrual cycle, which replicate studies from our laboratory and others. Increases in the right ear advantage (REA) were present in women at phases of the menstrual cycle associated with higher levels of ovarian hormones. The data also revealed correlations…