Wood, Goff, and Day (1971)
WOOD, Charles C., William R. Goff, and Ruth S. Day. “Auditory Evoked Potentials during Speech Perception.” Science, New Series, 173/4003 (Sep 24, 1971): 1248-1251.
Experimental attempt to establish left-hemisphere lateralization for processing of linguistic speech sounds, in contrast to processing of nonlinguistic sounds, by testing for differences in auditory invoked potentials.
Despite the large body of behavioral and clinical evidence for specialization of one hemisphere in speech perception, there is no evidence which clearly distinguishes neural activity specifically related to linguistic processing from that which occurs during the processing of any auditory stimulus. Empirical evidence for such a distinction requires a direct comparison of neural activity during linguistic and nonlinguistic processing conditions with other sources of variation in neural activity eliminated between conditions. (1248)
If the analysis of linguistic and nonlinguistic parameters of an acoustic signal consists of the same neural events, then evoked potentials should be the same (within the limits of normal variation) for both tasks during the pre-response interval. …These results indicate that neural events in the right hemisphere were identical for both tasks during the preresponse interval, regardless of the task requirements. In contrast, different neural events occurred in the left hemisphere during the same time interval, depending upon whether the task required analysis of linguistic or nonlinguistic parameters of the acoustic signal. (1250)
