| Abstract: | Evoked potentials of 16 human infants (mean age = 5.0 weeks, SD = 1.8 weeks) were recorded from the left and right, occipital and temporal areas. Spectral analysis showed a high amplitude, localized, coherent center of activity within the left temporal area for click stimuli, and a high amplitude, localized center of activity in the right occipital area for flash stimuli. It was proposed that the structured auditory information of the click and the unstructured visual information of the flash represented different degrees of familiarity to the subjects. With this hypothesis, left hemisphere involvement in stimulus processing would increase as the stimulus became more referrable to previous long- or short-term experience. Conversely, right hemisphere involvement would increase with unfamiliar stimuli which could not be readily associated with earlier data. |
