ENHANCED IMAGE GENERATION ABILITIES IN DEAF SIGNERS - A RIGHT-HEMISPHERE EFFECT

Deaf subjects who use American Sign Language as their primary language generated visual mental images faster than hearing nonsigning subject s when stimuli were initially presented to the right hemisphere. Deaf subjects exhibited a strong right hemisphere advantage for image gener ation using either categorical or coordinate spatial relations represe ntations. In contrast, hearing subjects showed evidence of left hemisp here processing for categorical spatial relations representations, and no hemispheric asymmetry for coordinate spatial relations representat ions. The enhanced right hemisphere image generation abilities observe d in deaf singers may be linked to a stronger right hemisphere involve ment in processing imageable signs and linguistically encoded spatial relations. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.