CEREBRAL LATERALIZATION OF DEAF AND HEARING INDIVIDUALS FOR LINGUISTIC COMPARISON JUDGMENTS

A group of congenitally deaf adults and a group of hearing adults, both fluent in sign language, were tested to determine cerebral lateralization. In the most revealing task, subjects were given a series of trials in which they were fist presented with a videotaped sign and then with a word exposed tachistoscopically to the right visual field or left visual field, and were required to judge whether the word corresponded to the sign or not. The results suggested that the comparison processes involved in the decision were performed more efficiently by the left hemisphere for hearing subjects and by the right hemisphere for deaf subjects. However, the deaf subjects performed as well as the hearing subjects in the left hemisphere, suggesting that the deaf are not impeded by their auditory-speech handicap from developing the left hemisphere for at least some types of linguistic processing. © 1979.