Right hemisphere language processing: lateral difference with imageable and nonimageable ambiguous words.
Influence of imageability on hemispheric processing difference is studied in a lexical decision task with semantic priming. Homographs and ambiguous words were biased according to the prime toward their low or high imageable meanings and unilaterally presented in the visual field. A right visual field (RVF) superiority was observed; it was nonsignificant for the high imageable (HI) meaning but significant for the low imageable (LI) meaning of the ambiguous words. Thus the results seem to favor a bilateral hemispheric representation of HI words and a unilateral left representation of LI words. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed to the various models of ambiguous word access processing.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics