HEMISPHERIC FUNCTION AND LINGUISTIC SKILL IN THE DEAF

The nature of hemispheric processing in the prelingually deaf was examined in a picture-letter matching task. It was hypothesized that linguistic competence in the deaf would be associated with normal or near-normal laterality (i.e., a left hemisphere advantage for analytic linguistic tasks). Subjects were shown a simple picture of a common object (e.g., lamp), followed by brief unilateral presentation of a manually signed or orthographic letter, and they had to indicate as quickly as possible whether the letter was present in the spelling of the object's label. While hearing subjects showed a marked left hemisphere advantage, no such superiority was found for either a linguistically skilled or unskilled group of deaf students. In the skilled group, however, there was a suggestion of a right hemisphere advantage for manually signed letters. It was concluded that while hemispheric asymmetry of function does not develop normally in the deaf, the absence of this normal pattern does not preclude the development of the analytic skills needed to deal with the structure of language. © 1979.