DISSOCIATION OF LANGUAGE AND COGNITION: A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF TWO DISCONNECTED RIGHT HEMISPHERES

Abstract

Two split-brain patients who differ in their right hemisphere language capacity were tested on a variety of simple cognitive tasks. Both isolated right hemispheres performed poorly on most tests. The results suggest that the presence of language in the right hemisphere, a brain system that ordinarily does not possess such competence, need not necessarily confer the full complement of cognitive skills associated with the language processing skills of the left hemisphere.