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Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Assessment of Cerebral Lateralization in Children using Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound fTCD
Published on: September 27, 2010
Language lateralization of hearing native signers: A functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) study of
Eva Gutierrez-Sigut1, Richard Daws1, Heather Payne2
1Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Neuroimaging studies suggest greater involvement of the left parietal lobe in sign language compared to speech production. This stronger activation might be linked to the specific demands of sign encoding and proprioceptive monitoring. In Experiment 1 we investigate hemispheric lateralization during sign and speech generation in hearing native users of English and British Sign Language (BSL). Participants exhibited stronger lateralization during BSL than English production. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether this increased lateralization index could be due exclusively to the higher motoric demands of sign production. Sign naïve participants performed a phonological fluency task in English and a non-sign repetition task. Participants were left lateralized in the phonological fluency task but there was no consistent pattern of lateralization for the non-sign repetition in these hearing non-signers. The current data demonstrate stronger left hemisphere lateralization for producing signs than speech, which was not primarily driven by motoric articulatory demands.
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