Bilingualism and Brain Lateralization

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the subject of bilingualism and brain lateralization. The notion that the right hemisphere may participate in the relearning of language(s) or certain language functions following left-hemisphere damage has been suggested in several case studies of polyglot aphasia. It has also been proposed that the right hemisphere in bilinguals may, even premorbidly, share language functions with the left hemisphere to a greater extent than is the case in unilinguals. Support for the latter possibility obtains from an extensive survey of the early polyglot aphasia literature, which revealed that the incidence of crossed aphasia in right-handers was 14% among the polyglots, as compared to an estimated 2% among unilinguals. This chapter focuses on theoretical issues bearing on the problem of cerebral hemispheric correlates of language processing in bilinguals. It presents a general summary of clinical and experimental findings, and also discusses a view to addressing whether and why factors intrinsic to bilingualism might influence the extent to which the left and right cerebral hemispheres partake differentially in language processing.

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