Bihemispheric sensitivity to sentence anomaly.
This study investigated cerebral asymmetries in sensitivity to sentence-level semantic anomaly. To separate the effects of anomalous message processing from those attributable to low sentence constraint, low-constraint sentence-fragment primes were followed by target words presented to the left or right visual fields. When completed by the target word, the sentences represented either normal or anomalous messages; in addition, one-half of the sentence primes contained a word strongly related to the target. Targets presented to both the left and right visual fields were advantaged by the presence of a related word, and disadvantaged by the presence of a semantically anomalous message. Contrary to some previous claims, this result implies that the right hemisphere can construct some message-level interpretations from sentences, such that semantic anomaly is registered, even if finer gradations of sentence constraint are not. This rudimentary integration of word meanings in sentences may provide a scaffolding for right hemisphere discourse processing. In light of these findings, we propose a revised view of left/right hemisphere differences in the processes used to interpret sentence meaning.
Chiarello
C
C
Department of Psychology, University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA. christine.chiarello@ucr.edu
Liu
S
S
Faust
M
M
D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012660:Semantics; D014794:Visual Fields