Presents implications for consideration by community, parents, educators, and policymakers if guided by the recommendations of the final report on the "Early Years Study" by McCain and Mustard. Cautions against an overemphasis on brain development during the early years and against viewing children as capital for social policy purposes.…

Provides information on foreign language study and the brain and highlights a Web site called Foreign Language Study and the Brain. The Web site is in Spanish and English and provides information on brain-sensitive activities that foster memory storage and language retrieval. Recent research on the brain and general recommendations for classroom…

Asserts that character is at the core of leadership, and that character development requires behavioral change as well as knowledge acquisition. Discusses how incorporating behavioral change into administrator preparation programs requires faculty to consider recent findings in neuroscience on how the brain learns, and the incorporation of these…

This paper reviews literature on the use of dichotic stimulation in individuals with mental retardation, and examines how noninvasive dichotic stimulation relates to hemisphere lateralization. Common findings are discussed concerning direction and magnitude of ear asymmetries, patterns of intrusion errors, and speech lateralization of Down…

Results are reported from a study concerned with measurement and analysis of brain hemisphere specialization preferences reported by 126 student teachers. The math/science student teachers expressed hemispheric preferences that differed significantly from the three other student groups (elementary liberal arts, secondary fine arts, and secondary…

Four children, aged 26-41 months, with localized, perinatal brain lesions, were compared to 4 matched controls. With the exception of phonological development, subjects scored below controls on all formal language measures; however, subjects often scored at or above test norms. No score differences were found between right- and left-brain-damaged…

Discusses the most significant findings of recent research and scholarship on the nature of the brain and its relevance to the teaching and learning of human languages. Topics covered include: (1) whether the brain is highly integrated or componential; (2) differences between conscious and unconscious processes; (3) hemispheric specialization; (4)…

This review of the literature on laterality research concludes that, despite advances in the classification accuracy of laterality methods, definitive conclusions about hemispheric specialization in individual cases of dyslexic children cannot be drawn. Event-related measurements of cerebral metabolism promise to complement but not replace…

Brain electrical activity (electroencephalogram; EEG) was recorded in a sample of low-income, black, and Hispanic mothers with and without depression and their three- to six-month-old infants. A greater number of mothers with depression and their infants versus mothers without depression and their infants displayed right frontal EEG asymmetry.…

Examined cerebral activation during sign language comprehension in six persons with deafness and nine hearing persons, all of whose parents were deaf. The group with deafness showed more activation than the hearing group in the right parieto-occipital region, indicating that they were more dependent on the spatial components in sign language than…

This article describes the language development in a left-handed young child with a left middle cerebral artery infarction. Patterns of development observed between 36 and 60 months of age are described as a transient jargon or fluent aphasia possibly resulting from initial reliance on an uninjured right hemisphere. (Author/DB)

The construct validity of Boder's typology of dyslexia was investigated using quantified electroencephalography with 39 children (ages 7-11) during a reading task and at rest. Results supported beta frequency differences in anticipated regions by dyslexia subtype during the reading task. However, the direction of difference hypothesis was not…

A Southern College of Optometry (Tennessee) study found the largest proportions of students to have converger or assimilator learning styles; more women than men were divergers. Substantial differences in men and women were found in hemispheric preference. Results suggest students with differing learning styles will perform differentially in…

An exploration of a popular model of bilingualism and bilingual behavior, based on Ervin and Osgood's (1954) survey of psycholinguistic theory and research, discusses misinterpretations, limits, and risks; natural and simulated bilingualism and complementary distribution of domains; and subordination and interference, compounding and fusion, and…

Kolb's Experiential Learning Model suggests that people differ in how they perceive and process information. Public agency training should incorporate knowledge of brain hemisphere dominance and learning style preferences in training design. (SK)