Language lateralisation measured across linguistic and national boundaries

Area of Science:

• Neuropsychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

• The visual half-field technique is a standard neuropsychological tool for assessing language lateralisation.
• Existing variations in the visual half-field paradigm hinder cross-study comparisons.
• A standardized translingual approach is needed for broader clinical and experimental application.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a word/non-word visual half-field paradigm using translingual stimuli for language lateralisation.
• To assess the reliability and validity of this paradigm across multiple languages and nationalities.
• To investigate the influence of multilingualism on the right visual field/left hemisphere advantage.

Main Methods:

• A word/non-word visual half-field paradigm with translingual stimuli was employed.
• 496 participants from seven European countries, speaking six languages, were tested.
• Accuracy and reaction times were analyzed to determine language lateralisation (right visual field/left hemisphere advantage).

Main Results:

• A significant right visual field/left hemisphere advantage was observed across all language groups in both accuracy and reaction times.
• This advantage explained up to 26.1% of the performance variance.
• The degree of the right visual field/left hemisphere advantage showed minimal variation across language groups and did not differ based on first/second language status or multilingualism.

Conclusions:

• The translingual lexical decision task (TLDT) is a simple, reliable, and valid measure of language lateralisation.
• The TLDT is suitable for clinical and experimental use across linguistic and national boundaries.
• The findings support the robustness of the right visual field/left hemisphere advantage in language processing, even in multilingual contexts.