The research this seems to be discussing is at least partly described in "Language status and hemispheric involvement in reading: Evidence from trilingual Arabic speakers tested in Arabic, Hebrew, and English" by Raphiq Ibrahim and Zohar Eviatar. So far, I haven't been able to turn up a copy, so I'll just list my non-neuroscientist questions and concerns. I don't mean that I don't believe it necessarily; just that I have trouble accepting a lot of these statements without further qualification and discussion.<p>- Lateralization of brain function is a tricky business, because it's prone to exaggeration and urban legend. I'd like some clear citations for statements like, "When you are starting something new, there is a lot of [right hemisphere] involvement."<p>- Given the preceding statement, I'd also like some clear citations for "When the eyes see something for just a short time, and it is at one side of a screen, only one brain hemisphere is quick enough to process the image." When I first read this sentence, it made sense to me, but things which appeal to common sense are not necessarily true.<p>- What are the actual rates of recognition for the letters by the different speakers and for the different hemispheres? Was it really an all-or-nothing result, or was it a 49%-or-%51 result?<p>- Because this experiment (apparently) only tested individual letters, how does one take into account the fact that Arabic letters change their form in various parts of a word? Perhaps Arabic words are easier to read than Hebrew words because the letters, when put together, have a more recognizable shape than Hebrew letters, which have a more uniform outline. Would right-brain recognition of Arabic words vs. Hebrew words yield different results than the individual letters?<p>- Arabic is widely spoken in Israel, but what percentage of the Arabic speakers were native Arabic speakers who learned Hebrew later in life, and what percentage were native Hebrew speakers who learned Arabic later in life? How much later in life?<p>- Arabic typeset on a computer can differ radically from calligraphic Arabic and handwritten Arabic. What variety was tested? Would handwritten Arabic (which generally uses lines instead of dots for diacritics) aid or hinder understanding?<p>In general, science news prepared by non-scientific sources leaves out a lot of detail, but these are questions which I think could have a lot of bearing on the truth of this experiment.