Bilingüismo escolar y lateralización cerebral

Abstract

The topic of this paper is language lateralization in subjects whose bilingualism (Spanish-English) has been acquired in a school environment. We selected (from a larger sample) two groups of subjects: one of them with a poor performance in second language (beginners) and the other with a high performance (advanced) in L₂. The subjects were tested through the concurrent activities paradigm, on three different linguistic tasks: Repetition aloud, visual discrimination and auditive discrimination of words. The general results showed left lateralization (greater motor right-hand interference) for both Spanish (L₁) and English (L₂). Nevertheless, the linguistic tasks showed: a) a different degree of motor reduction only in L₂; b) asymmetry (left lateralization) of both visual and auditive discrimination in L₁ and c) auditive discrimination asymmetry only in L₂. Differences by sex or by bilingual level were not found. The results suggest a lower degree of left lateralization for L₂, and stress the importance of the kind of processing needed by tasks.