CEREBRAL SPECIALIZATION FOR RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE IN INDIVIDUALS WITH DOWN-SYNDROME

Two experiments examined cerebral specialisation for linguistic materi al in adults with Down syndrome (DS). For a dihaptic letter matching t ask, a left hand/right hemisphere advantage was observed for the DS gr oup. For a visual field letter identification task, the DS data were s uggestive of a left field/right hemisphere superiority. Thus, as predi cted by our model (Elliott, Weeks, & Elliott, 1987), atypical cerebral organisation of speech perception is evident in persons with DS. More over, the functional disconnection of neural systems subserving the co ntrol of complex movement and those responsible for speech perception can be generalised to include the haptic and visual processing of ling uistic material.