ABSTRACT
With the recent accumulation of research and clinical evidence in the area of language representation in the brain, it is becoming clearer that although the left hemisphere (LH) is far superior in most linguistic comprehension tasks, the right hemisphere (RH) can comprehend language to some extent (e.g., Beeman, 1993; Beeman et al., 1994; Brownell, simpson, Bihrle, Potter, & Gardner, 1990; Chiarello, 1988, 1991; Stemmer, Giroux & Joanette, 1994). However, the range of linguistic processes examined in the LH and RH is still rather limited. This may be why there are no satisfactory theoretical models that can explain the (perhaps unique) contribution of each hemisphere to the understanding of language. Especially evident is the lack of laterality studies based on more complex psycholinguistic paradigms and theoretical concepts. Such research into the linguistic functions of the two cerebral hemispheres of normal subjects may allow for a much deeper and more complex analysis of brain-language relationships. In this chapter, I describe several studies that examined the effects of relatively long and complex linguistic contexts on word recognition in the LH and RH. In these studies, we examined and applied several models extant in the psycholinguistic literature to the study of language comprehension in the RH.
