THE INFLUENCE OF HEMISPHERIC BRAIN ACTIVITY ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF THE UNIVERSITY PHILOLOGY DEPARTMENT STUDENTS

Abstract

It is widely known that the left half of the neocortex is responsible for speech. Given the law of asymmetry in the brain work, right-handed students of a philology department should be more successful in their academic studies. It is this logical conclusion that has been questioned and verified experimentally. The result obtained is presented in this article. The purpose of this micro study is to establish the relationship between the functional specialization of the neocortex, right-/left-handedness and academic performance of philology students completing their three-year studies of foreign languages at a classical university. The preliminary hypothesis of the study stated that the right-handed students with a dominant left hemisphere of the brain, in which, as is known, there is the speech center that actively stimulates all speech processes, should be more successful than left-handed students who do not have such an advantage. This goal setting determined the content structure of the article, consisting of a brief introduction to a lateral phenotypy, a description of methods for determining the dominance of hemispheric brain activity and the results of their use in diagnosing students, as well as establishing a correlation between the academic performance of students and their lateral phenotype. Cognitive activity is the central function of the brain; therefore, the use of the achievements of neuroscience in the educational field is an inexhaustible source of improving educational technologies. This makes the article timely and topical. The following scientific methods were used to solve the stated problems: analytical-synthetic and empirical i.e. description, explanation, generalization, as well as experimental. The results of this micro research did not validate the hypothesis: the left-handed philology students, whose dominant hemisphere does not contain the speech zone that supports all speech processes, turned out to be more successful academically in philological disciplines than the right-handed students of the same stream of study. This implies the need for broader and deeper research.