The lateralization of hemispheric function in the recognition of Chinese characters

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the lateralization of hemispheric functions. In experiment 1 single Chinese characters, English words and random dot forms were used as stimuli presented to the left or right visual field of adults. In experiment 2 adults and school children were asked to recognize single characters presented in one field and Arabic numerals in the opposite field. The results indicated that adults and children all showed left hemisphere superiority in the recognition of characters. Some possible causes were given to explain why Chinese characters, being an ideographic language, showed a similar superiority as phonetic languages.