Cerebral Lateralization: Cerebral Asymmetry Practical - Essay Example

Cerebral lateralization: Cerebral Asymmetry Practical. This experiment was set to investigate cerebral asymmetry among thirty participants. The aim of this experiment was to find out the accuracy speed of phonological processing in the left and right hemispheres. The hypothesis for this study was “verbal processing as measured by the rhyme/non-rhyme task is faster and more accurate in the left hemisphere than the right hemisphere of the brain”. Several pairs of words with a destructor were given to the participants. They were then asked to show out which words either rhymed or did not rhyme. The participants of the study were directed to press a key (A) if the words shown could not rhyme, and to press key (K) if the words given did rhyme. Different suggestions of the types of the word pairs were given to the participants. Several values of the right and left, percent accuracy were collected and tabulated. The mean and the standard deviation for the data were calculated. The results obtained showed that the mean score for the percent accuracy of the left hemisphere was higher than that of the right hemisphere. The results obtained also proved that the left and the right hemispheres are lateralized for language. Introduction. Cerebral lateralization occurs when there is an increased specialization of the two hemispheres of an individual’s brain. If a human brain goes through a longitudinal fissure, two similar cerebral hemispheres that are connected to the hemisphere called the corpus callosum are formed. The sides, which are formed, take after each other in terms of appearance, and each of the two hemispheres appears to be mirrored. However, functions of the two cortical hemispheres are differently managed despite the strong anatomical distinctions of the two hemispheres (Edwards, 2003). For instance corpus sulcus is shorter in the right hemisphere as opposed to the left hemisphere (Edwards, 2003). For decades psychology has made a wide generalization about either side of the brain being characterized by label like creativity and logic such that creativity is towards the right hemisphere and logic to the left hemisphere. Despite this, the specific labels need a careful treatment. Even though the lateral dominance of the hemispheres could be measurable, the characteristic features exist in two sides. Some unifying research that cuts across techniques in brain science, raises up questions about the specialized functions in motor outputs and sensory inputs at the processing level that appear to be destructed away. Over the past thirty years, there have been detailed and computational models that have been pursued in the study of cerebral liberalization. The pursued models of reading aloud and visual recognitions of the word have been developed (Edwards, 2003). These models have given out more account on aspects of reading however, these theories have ignored the aspects of the reading process especially the front end and computational reading. They do not discuss any pertinent aspect concerning the vision processes operation in reading, representation of letters and their print activation (Goldberg, 2001). In fact, the evidence of experiment provides no support towards correlation of structural differences of the left and right hemispheres. In attempts to cover the gap established in early research, a study was advanced so that actual computations used in letter activation and to read can be developed. The study was set to investigate the proposition of phonological processing. The aim of the experiment was to test and find out the accuracy speed of phonological processing in the left and right hemispheres. The hypothesis for this study was “verbal processing as measured by the rhyme/non-rhyme task is faster and more accurate at the left hemisphere than it is in the brains right hemisphere”. Method. Participants. This study had thirty participants. Of these fifteen were women where as the remaining group of fifteen participants were men. The participants to take part in this study were selected basing on three criteria. The first criterion was ensuring that all participants were right handed. The second criterion was that the participants were to have English as their first language. The last criterion was that the participants were to be correlated or normal towards vision. After the selection process, thirty right-handed, participants with English as their first language were selected for the study. Materials used for the study. The materials utilized in this experiment included a divided visual field paradigm and a phonological rhyme/non rhyme task developed by Mead and Hampson (1996). The apparatus were arranged as shown in the diagram.Diagram 1; showing the LVF and RVF representation. Procedure. The divided visual field paradigm was used to present the visual stimuli selectively to the right or left visual field and hence to the contra lateral (opposite side) cerebral hemisphere. This arrangement is as shown in the diagram. Each trial was started by a centrally fixated point which was informed of a plus sign (+). The fixation point was then replaced by a cue word. After a short time, two words surfaced, each one positioned at either side of the central arrow. The central arrow pointed towards the target word. The arrow was either to the right (->) or to the left ( Read More