Visual temporal asymmetries are related to asymmetries in linguistic perception

There are numerous recent reports of law-level temporal asymmetries favouri ng the left hemisphere, and increasing speculation that the left hemisphere 's relative superiority at linguistic processing may be related to these as ymmetries. The present. study sought to test this claim by assessing lingui stic lateralization with the Fused Dichotic Words Test and Visual temporal asymmetries with a lateralized version of an inspection-time test in a samp le of 40 participants balanced for sex and handedness. We found evidence fo r a significant right-visual-field (left hemisphere) advantage for accuracy on the inspection-time task, F(1,36) = 4.38, P = 0.043, and this asymmetry was significantly correlated with laterality scores on the linguistic dich otic-listening task, r = 0.306, P < 0.028 before disattenuation, and r = 0. 486 after disattenuation. This result supports the position that low-level temporal asymmetries ate related to asymmetries in linguistic processing. ( C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.