ABSTRACT
Performance of left- and right-handed subjects was compared over a battery of reading tests. When speed of silent reading with adequate comprehension was used as an index of reading proficiency, left-handers were significantly poorer readers than right-handers. Oral reading speed was compared for normal texts, and for texts that were visually distorted by case alternation, or syntactically and semantically distorted by a type of fourth order approximation. Left-handers showed relatively more decrement as a result of visual distortion, whereas right-handers were relatively more impaired by linguistic distortion. Left-handers therefore appear to rely more heavily on visual analysis during reading, and to make less use of contextual constraints. Left-handed subjects were recalled for a follow-up study, and given a dichotic listening test. Eight showed a left-ear advantage for recognition of monosyllabic words, and were significantly slower readers than those with a right-ear advantage. A further experiment explored hemisphere differences in a lexical decision task. Words and nonwords were presented in left and right visual fields. Stimuli were in either case-alternated or non-case-alternated forms. Nonwords were further divided into homophones and nonhomophones. These manipulations were used to probe for hemisphere differences in access to the internal lexicon by a visual look-up, or by phonological recoding. Reaction times (RTs) to homo-phonic nonwords were slower in the right visual field than in the left, but RTs to words and nonhomophonic nonwords were faster. Phonologically mediated access to the internal lexicon appears to be a left hemisphere based strategy.
