Hemispheric Lateralization of Words in Turkish-English Bilinguals and Turkish Monolinguals

It is well-established in the literature that language functions are controlled in the left hemisphere in the majority of right-handed people. However, contradictory results have been obtained in the bilingual laterality literature. This study aims to investigate how lexical processing is represented in monolinguals and bilinguals. Two groups of participants performed a lexical decision task. The first group comprised of Turkish-English bilinguals (N= 48) who acquired both languages from birth. In the second group, there were Turkish monolingual speakers (N= 53). The participants were instructed to decide if the words presented in the right or left visual field were real words or non-words. The results showed that lexical processing is left-lateralized in monolinguals. For bilinguals, on the other hand, it was bilaterally presented.