Visual half-field word recognition as a function of syntactic class and imageability

Abstract Twenty-four normal right-handed subjects were shown vertically oriented strings of letters in the left and right visual half-fields (VHF) and asked to discriminate words from non-words. Analysis of manual reaction time responses showed a significant right VHF (left hemisphere) advantage for low imagery nouns, adjectives and verbs as well as high imagery verbs. There was no VHF difference in speed of response for high imagery nouns and adjectives. It was concluded that right hemisphere word recognition is related to both imageability and syntactic class.

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