Cerebral Dominance and Its Relation to Psychological Function.

Abstract

This little book of 31 pages is the 19th publication of Henderson Trust Lectures for "the advancement and diffusion of the Science of Phrenology." The material is based on studies of several hundred adults who underwent brain operations or sustained brain injuries, and 20 dyslexic children over the past decade. On the basis of the evidence cited, Zangwill makes 2 major points. (1) Though the hemisphere contralateral to the preferred hand mediates language functions in dextrals this relationship between cerebral dominance and handedness cannot be true for sinistrals. Instead, the speech mediating hemisphere in sinistrals is more often the left though, in an appreciable proportion of these cases, speech appears to be imperfectly lateralized. (2) Children with left or inconsistent hand preference are more likely to suffer from backwardness in reading and spelling than right-handed children. On the other hand, the inferred "cerebral ambilaterality" offers greater possibility of restitution of