Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Four experiments show that people differ strongly in the extent to v^ich they depend on linguistic structure during language comprehension.Structure-dependent people are immediately affected by grammatical variables,vrtiile structure-independent people are less affected by such variables. A surprising population difference between the two types of people suggests a genetic and neurological basis for the behavioral difference. All subjects were right-handed. However, structure-dependent people report no left-handers in their family, while structure-independent people do report left-handers in their family. This suggests that the neurological organization for linguistic ability in right handers with familial left-handedness, is more diffuse than for right handers with no familial left-handedness. Other facts connect this to a current hormonal theory of the ontogenesis of hemispheric asymmetries.