Reaction times of four year old children to monaurally presented verbal stimuli: some evidence for right-hemisphere linguistic function.
Previous studies of cerebral dominance in children have provided information about the relative superiority of the left hemisphere over the right for language processing. The present study, however, assessed the absolute capacity of each hemisphere's ability for analyzing auditory-verbal stimuli in a group of young children (mean age = 4.0). Twenty-four normally developing children (12 males and 12 females) responded to monaurally presented verbal stimuli with their right and left hands at separate times. The results were consistent with an efficiency model of neurolinguistic organization, suggesting that the childrens' minor hemisphere was actively processing verbal information in the presence of a dominant left hemisphere.
D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D006801:Humans; D011930:Reaction Time; D013067:Speech Perception