Hemispheric specialization for reading

Behavioral laterality tasks with linguistic stimuli were used to assess the differential processing efficiencies of the cerebral hemispheres in right- and left-handed adults. Findings from a lateralized lexical decision task with concrete nouns supported Zaidel's (1983) "direct access" model of hemi spheric functioning. A dual task consisting of oral and silent reading indi cated that the right hand was significantly more disrupted than the left du ring unimanual finger tapping; however, some bilateral interference was obs erved. Taken together the findings suggest that although the left hemispher e was relatively more efficient, the right hemisphere was dynamically invol ved in the reading process, (C) 2000 Academic Press.