title: Language lateralization of hearing native signers: A functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) study of speech and sign production.
abstract: Neuroimaging studies suggest greater involvement of the left parietal lobe in sign language compared to speech production. This stronger activation might be linked to the specific demands of sign encoding and proprioceptive monitoring. In Experiment 1 we investigate hemispheric lateralization during sign and speech generation in hearing native users of English and British Sign Language (BSL). Participants exhibited stronger lateralization during BSL than English production. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether this increased lateralization index could be due exclusively to the higher motoric demands of sign production. Sign naïve participants performed a phonological fluency task in English and a non-sign repetition task. Participants were left lateralized in the phonological fluency task but there was no consistent pattern of lateralization for the non-sign repetition in these hearing non-signers. The current data demonstrate stronger left hemisphere lateralization for producing signs than speech, which was not primarily driven by motoric articulatory demands.
authors.affiliation: Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: eva.gutierrez@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gutierrez-Sigut
authors.affiliation: Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Daws
authors.affiliation: Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Payne
authors.affiliation: Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Blott
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Education, University College London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Chloë
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.affiliation: Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mairéad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: MacSweeney
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D012813:Sign Language; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D017585:Ultrasonography, Doppler, Transcranial; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Hearing native signers; Language lateralization; Language production; Phonological fluency; Semantic fluency; Sign language; fTCD