The importance of being first: an analysis of tachistoscopic presentations of words.
The importance of the first letter of a word as a cue for the rest of the word was explored in a tachistoscopic presentation of four letter English words to the two hemispheres. The positioning of words presented bilaterally and the frequency of the words were manipulated so that the role of the first letter could be examined. The results indicate that the first letter does not play the critical role in word recognition that has been ascribed to it. In the standard bilateral presentation, subjects' recall patterns indicated that first letters were recalled equally well whether the word was presented in the right or left visual field. However, subjects did not recall as many words correctly when they went to the left visual field. The results were interpreted as supporting an information processing view of hemispheric specialization. Such a view proposes several levels of functioning in which the two hemispheres overlap, cooperate, or specialize, depending on the task to be accomplished.
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D014794:Visual Fields