Hemispheric asymmetries in interpreting forms vs colors in ambiguous patterns.
Prior to receiving briefly lateralized presentations of ambiguous visual patterns (Rorschach inkblots), 28 normal right-handed males heard two words, each describing a different interpretation of the pattern, e.g., one word might describe an interpretation based on attending to shapes or forms (form choices) and the other might describe an interpretation based on attending to chromatic color (e.g., color choices). Color choices were more frequent than form choices on left-hemisphere (LH) presentations of the patterns, and form choices were more frequent than color choices on right-hemisphere (RH) presentations. These results were interpreted as consistent with the theory that the LH's favored mental representation is semantic (i.e., frequent choices of concepts associated with names of colors in the patterns) and the RH's favored representation is imaginal (i.e., frequent choices of concepts associated with difficult-to-label forms in the patterns).
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Psychology Department, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723.
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Owings
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D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D012392:Rorschach Test; D012660:Semantics