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advantage in the first language. English-dominant Americans acquiring Hebrew in Israel displayed a greater right-ear advantage for English words than for Hebrew, and Hebrew-dominant Israelis who learned some English in school showed a greater right-ear advantage for Hebrew. Gaziel, Obler, Benton, and Albert (1977), in a tachistoscopic study of Israeli students studying English, found results quite consistent with those of Obler et al. (1975). As can be seen on Table 3,
Table 3. Number of subjects showing visual field effect
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Seventh grade:
Hebrew stimuli English stimuli
LVFE 0 RVFE LVFE 0 RVFE
2 1 21 20 1 3
Ninth grade:
Hebrew stimuli English stimuli
LVFE 0 RVFE LVFE 0 RVFE
0 0 24 16 2 6
Eleventh grade:
Hebrew stimuli English stimuli
LVFE 0 RVFE LVFE 0 RVFE
2 1 21 6 5 13
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LVFE = left visual field effect (suggests right hemisphere processing).
RVFE = right visual field effect (suggests left hemisphere processing).
0 = no difference in visual field accuracy.
From Gaziel, Obler, Benton, and Albert (1977).
processing of Hebrew words was done by the left hemisphere by most subjects in all 3 years of school. With English, the second language, this was not the case: in grade 7, most subjects showed a left visual field advantage. The number of subjects behaving this way was less in grade 9, and less still in grade 11.
Obler (1980) suggests that these data are most consistent with a stage hypothesis. The right hemisphere participates in second language acquisition in early stages. Obler's hypothesis is not at all inconsistent with the findings we have listed above. If the right hemisphere is involved only in initial stages of second language acquisition, we
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