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The development of lateralization of cerebral function in hearing and deaf children was studied using the concurrent task paradigm. Concurrent processing of a nonverbal task did not cause a selective hand impairment monitored by a manual tapping task. The deaf were, however, more impaired than the hearing children in both of the age groups studied. Using a concurrent verbal task, both groups manifested a selective impairment of right-hand performance. The deaf also showed a greater left-hand decrement than did the hearing children. This result suggests that hemispheric specialization may be less apparent in the deaf than in hearing children. The factor of cognitive task difficulty was, however, raised as a possible explanation of these results.

No abstract