Effects of degree of handedness in left-handed individuals on semantic and syntactic skills used for sentence comprehension

Purpose: Research in adult language has focused on right-handed individuals. In the language area of auditory processing, Townsend, Carrithers, and Bever (2001) demonstrated that syntax processing has a relationship to a strong right-handedness. The purpose of the current study was to determine if a strong handedness in left-hand individuals correlates with either semantic or syntactic information based on response times in aurally presented sentence stimuli. Method: The participants included 16 self-reported, left-handed college students, ages 18-25. Participants were given the Edinburgh handedness inventory (EHI), and a familial inventory to classify degree of handedness. The participants were binaurally presented with 48 sentences with semantic and syntactic stimuli as described by Townsend et al. (2001). Results: There were no significant results found for correlations between degree of lefthandedness and semantic and syntactic processing at the p > 0.05 level, when measuring handedness with two different assessments. Results of the t test for syntactic probes demonstrated a marginally significant difference at a 0.07 significance level. Conclusions: In this study, strong degrees of left-handedness did not demonstrate the relationship to syntax or semantic processing, as previously found in right-handed individuals