Interhemispheric interaction during global-local processing in mathematically gifted adolescents, average-ability youth, and college students.
Interhemispheric interaction in mathematically gifted (MG) adolescents, average-ability (AA) youth, and college students (CS) was examined by presenting hierarchical letter pairs in 3 viewing conditions: (a) unilaterally to the right hemisphere (RH), (b) unilaterally to the left hemisphere (LH), or (c) bilaterally, with 1 member of the pair presented to each hemisphere simultaneously. Participants made global-local, match-no-match judgments. For the AA and CS, the LH was faster for local matches and the RH for global matches. The MG showed no hemispheric differences. Also, AA and CS were slower on cooperative compared with unilateral trials, whereas the MG showed the opposite pattern. These results suggest that enhanced interhemispheric interaction is a unique functional characteristic of the MG brain.
Singh
Harnam
H
U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Ft. Benning, GA, USA.
W  O'Boyle
Michael
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001076:Aptitude; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002672:Child, Gifted / Q000523:psychology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values; D012858:Size Perception