title: Hemispheric differences for identification of words and nonwords in Urdu-English bilinguals.
abstract: Hemispheric asymmetry was examined for Urdu-English bilinguals identifying printed Urdu words and nonwords, separated Urdu letter strings, digits, and English nonwords. In all cases, fewer errors occurred when stimuli were presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) than to the left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH). Qualitative error patterns suggested that separated Urdu letter strings were processed more serially than Urdu letter strings joined to form words or pronounceable nonwords and more serially on RVF/LH than on LVF/RH trials. This qualitative laterality effect is similar to that found for Hebrew and Arabic but opposite that found for English and suggests that the qualitative manner of processing printed verbal material is influenced by language-specific factors such as scanning direction, orthographic-to-phonological mapping rules, and morphology.
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, Palo Alto, CA 94304-1207, USA. madamson@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Maheen Mausoof
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Adamson
authors.forename: Joseph B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Hellige
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*