ABSTRACT
Research on hemispheric specialization in language has blossomed over the past decades. Much of the early thinking on this topic grew out of a framework in which laterality issues were approached in terms of the task, or material being processed (e.g., Kimura, 1961). As such, the division of function between the two hemispheres tended to be based on the tasks or types of material: Language was assigned to the left hemisphere, spatial analysis to the right hemisphere. Simple task-based dichotomies quickly ran into difficulty, especially as our understanding of the component processes associated with these tasks became more sophisticated. By emphasizing that complex tasks such as language required the successful operation of a number of dissociable processes (e.g., Caramazza, 1990; Coltheart, Satori, & Job, 1987), it became clear that the contribution of the two hemispheres for each process could vary. This thinking has helped refocus questions on hemispheric specialization to a more computationally based framework.
