Language lateralisation measured across linguistic and national boundaries

Abstract

The visual half-field technique has been shown to be a reliable and valid neuropsychological measurement of language lateralisation, typically showing higher accuracy and faster correct responses for linguistic stimuli presented in the right visual field (RVF) than left visual field (LVF). The RVF advantage corresponds to the well-known dominance of the left hemisphere (LH) in processing language(s). However, clinical and experimental neuroscientists around the globe use different variations of the visual half-field paradigm, making direct comparisons difficult. The current study used a word/non-word visual half-field paradigm with translingual stimuli. In total, 496 participants from seven European countries were investigated: Belgium (64), England (49), Germany (85), Italy (48), The Netherlands (87), Norway (51), and Switzerland (126), covering six international languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian). All language groups revealed a significant RVF/LH advantage in accuracy and reaction times that accounted for up to 26.1% of the total variance in performance. We found some variation in the degree of the RVF/LH advantage across language groups, accounting for a maximum of 3.7% of the total variance in performance. The RVF/LH advantage did not differ between subsamples speaking English, French or German as first or second languages or between monolingual and early/late bi/multilinguals. The findings suggest that the translingual lexical decision task (TLDT) is a simple but reliable measurement of language lateralisation that can be applied clinically and experimentally across linguistic and national boundaries.

Assessing the reliability of an online behavioural laterality battery: A pre-registered study

“…With 100 participants completing 256 trials, Willemin et al reported a RVF advantage at the population level. Since then this effect has been replicated in a sample of 496 participants covering six international languages, with evidence of a RVF for each language studied (Hausmann et al, 2019). Not only does this task show validity, it seems reliable given Brederoo et al's (2020) observation that the task yields good split-half reliability when tested with 122 participants: r = 0.86 for error rates and r = 0.80 for response times.…”

“…Our task was designed to require covert speech, raising the question of whether an active speech production component might reveal stronger lateralization. However, this explanation seems unlikely, given that recent studies have reported robust right visual-field advantages on a lexical decision task that does not require active speech production (Brederoo et al, 2020;Hausmann et al, 2019;Willemin et al, 2016).…”

The depth and breadth of multiple perceptual asymmetries in right handers and non-right handers

“…Having said that, these tasks are easy to set up and administer. In fact, the kind of large numbers required for our proportional analyses lend themselves rather nicely to a multi-lab approach which for example, has been recently used to great effect in examining visual half field studies of lexical decision (Hausmann et al, 2019). We submit that behavioural psychology can contribute substantially to such taxonomic efforts, in ways that expensive, time constrained, brain scans cannot.…”

Is laterality adaptive? Pitfalls in disentangling the laterality–performance relationship

“…Surprisingly, of 13 tasks employed, for 8 the correlations were negative, precluding the generalization that performance increases with lateralization. Other studies diverge too: some report a positive relation (Crow, Crow, Done, & Leask, 1998;Mellet et al 2014;Hirnstein, Hausmann, & Hugdahl, 2014), some a negative relation (Ladavas & Umilta, 1983;Hirnstein, Hausmann, & Gunturkun, 2008;Hausmann et al, 2019), and some no relation between asymmetry and performance at all . Chiarello, Welcome, Halderman and Leonard (2009) and Chiarello, Vazquez, Felton, and Leonard (2013) found a positive relation between asymmetry and performance in lexical processing, but only in individuals with consistent hand preference.…”