Laterality Differences in Native Arabic Speakers and English Speakers Article

Laterality Differences in Native Arabic Speakers and English Speakers - Article Example This first for example tests whether an English speaker is able to give right ear preference in hearing Arabic sounds and vice versa. This was then extended to include the other categories. Although the majority of tests showed no significant differences for left or right ear perception i.e. showed no suggestion of lateralized perception, at least one from each of the 4 categories of objectives did show evidence of a significant difference at the 5% level of significance. In the first set of tests in which all participants were exposed to both native and non-native sounds to observe any lateralized perception, it was found that each group of speakers had lateralized perception for their own native language but not for the non-native language. That is, the lateralized perception was evident amongst Arabic speakers during the Arabic language test, and amongst English speakers during the English language test, but not during the language test that was in a foreign language for each group. The significant finding was that in these cases, the average scores for right-ear perception was greater than the average scores for left-ear perception. Furthermore, in a comparison bet ween the two tests, the average score on the Arabic language test was significantly greater than the average score on the English language test for right-ear perception in the case of Arabic language speakers, and left-ear perception in the case of English language speakers. Whereas the above was as expected, when the three factors of handedness, gender, and native language were studied, the results were more interesting, and lateralization was evident in one of the 4 instances for each factor. In the English language test, gender was the only significant factor whereas, in the Arabic language test, the other two factors rather than gender were significant.