The hemispheric lateralization of speech processing depends on what speech is: A hierarchical perspective

A recurring question in neuroimaging studies of spoken language is whether speech is processed largely bilaterally,or whether the left hemisphere plays a more dominant role (cf.,hickok and poeppel,2007; rauschecker and scott,2009). although questions regarding underly- ing mechanisms are certainly of interest,the discussion unfortunately gets side- tracked due to the imprecise use of the word speech: by being more explicit about the type of cognitive and linguis- tic processing to which we are referring it may be possible to reconcile many of the disagreements present in the literature. © 2012 peelle.