Talk:Psycholinguistics/Hemispheric Lateralization of Language

Your chapter is nicely organized and quite comprehensive. The images are effective.

However do be careful with your wording. For example, the first sentence is inaccurate: "Hemispheric lateralization refers to the distinction between locations of right and left functions in the brain." Actually, the term refers to the distinction between functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Lateralization is not, in general, primarily of interest for language - it's of interest for lots of functions. Language is a function that tends to be strongly lateralized however.

The sections on "the Left hemisphere" and "the right hemisphere" seem out of place. First off, they are quite short and don't come close to covering what we know about language in either hemisphere. Nor do they seem comparable in what they talk about. Everything that's in these sections seems like it would fit in one of the preceding sections on different techniques. These two sections would be a good place to list which aspects of language processing are generally lateralized in one or the other hemisphere. This is a very important aspect of your topic that you really haven't put anywhere - you discuss various methods and studies, but nowhere do you make clear how language is actually lateralized.

Do not cite Jay's Psychology of Language textbook, nor Kolb & Wishaw's neuropsych textbook. Cite primary sources. For example in the section on sign language, you should cite Hickok, Bellugi, and Poizner's work on aphasia in signers, and some of the many fMRI studies of sign language (Neville et al. 1998 was the first; there have also been papers specifically addressing the question of lateralization in signers. There's a recent review paper by Campbell & MacSweeney). In other cases you are citing K&W even though you mention the names of the people who actually did the studies.

You absolutely need to read and discuss Knecht et al's work using transcranial doppler to investigate the relationship between handedness and language lateralization