Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Recent research has shown that expertise in English and music reading both rely more on left hemisphere (LH) processing whereas Chinese character processing is more bilateral. Accordingly, music-reading expertise may influence hemispheric lateralization in English word processing more than in Chinese processing due to stronger competition in LH processing. Here we recruited musicians and non-musicians in a divided visual field study of English word and Chinese character naming. In English word processing, whereas non-musicians showed a typical right visual field (RVF)/LH advantage, musicians showed a left visual field (LVF)/right hemisphere (RH) advantage and responded significantly faster than nonmusicians in both the LVF and the center position. This effect may be due to competition for LH processing between music and English reading expertise, making musicians’ English word processing more right-lateralized. In contrast, in Chinese character naming, both musicians and non-musicians showed a similar bilateral pattern. This result suggests that music reading experience may have differential influences on the processing of different languages, depending on their similarities in the cognitive processes involved