Suggestive evidence for an involvement of the right hemisphere in the recovery from childhood aphasia: a 3-year follow-up case study.

We describe the case of an 11-year-old, previously healthy, pre-puberal, right-handed girl with acquired aphasia following an extensive cerebral hemorrhage into a left hemisphere brain tumor. A 3-year follow-up evaluation of the girl's communicative performance showed an incomplete recovery of linguistic abilities with a good recovery of comprehensive components, but persisting severe impairment in expressive language. At the end of the follow-up period, with the aim of assessing the lateralization of some linguistic abilities, we carried out an experimental investigation using tachistoscopic reading and object naming tests along with a dichotic listening test.