Levels of Hemispheric Specialization in Infancy

摘要

The presence of a developmental relation between infants' handedness in tasks of unimanual manipulation and their vocalization of syllables at six months of age were studied. Although aspects of handedness may be innate, infants' manual preference does undergo developmental change during the first year of life, with onset of unimanual handedness and the onset of reduplicated syllable babbling between five and seven months. Evidence for this developmental relation, in conjunction with previous data suggesting a developmental relation between bimanual handedness and phonemic articulation in speech at about eleven months, suggests the presence of successive levels of hemispheric specialization for the control of different articulatory units in infants' vocalization.