Facilitation and disruption of lateralized syllable processing by unattended stimuli in the opposite visual field (original) (raw)
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Vowel processing in the left and right visual fields
Brain and Language, 1982
Two laterality experiments were conducted to assess the performance of the left and right hemispheres in a letter classification task using only vowel pairs. In Experiment I stimuli were presented in a print-like form and neither physical nor name matches yielded hemispheric asymmetries. Experiment II, by using script-like vowels, showed an overall advantage of the right hemisphere for both kinds of match. These findings suggest that physical matches and name matches for print-like vowels are performed by both hemispheres. The right-hemisphere advantage for script-like letters is attributable to the higher-order level of spatial processing required by this material.
Laterality Effects in the Processing of Syllable Structure
Brain and Language, 1999
Recent phonological research has shown that the syllable plays a major role in the phonology of German. The present study investigates laterality effects in the processing of syllable structure by means of dichotic presentation of German word pairs that differ in number of syllables, but that differ minimally in the phonemes they comprise (e.g., BREIT and BEREIT). Results showed a sex difference in laterality for the processing of the experimental stimuli, with a greater right-hemispheric lateralization in men and a more bilateral organization in women.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2000
The processing advantage for words in the right visual field (RVF) has often been assigned to parallel orthographic analysis by the left hemisphere and sequential by the right. The authors investigated this notion using the Reicher-Wheeler task to suppress influences of guesswork and an eye-tracker to ensure central fixation. RVF advantages obtained for all serial positions and identical U-shaped serial-position curves obtained for both visual fields (Experiments 1-4). These findings were not influenced by lexical constraint (Experiment 2) and were obtained with masked and nonmasked displays (Experiment 3). Moreover, words and nonwords produced similar serial-position effects in each field, but only RVF stimuli produced a word-nonword effect (Experiment 4). These findings support the notion that left-hemisphere function underlies the RVF advantage but not the notion that each hemisphere uses a different mode of orthographic analysis. Electronic mail may be sent to trj ©psychology .nottingham.ac.uk. process words by mapping orthographic information onto lexical entries in parallel, whereas the right hemisphere has only a more rudimentary process that maps orthographic information sequentially (e.g.. This distinction between the ways in which the two hemispheres process words gains support from lexical-decision and naming studies where increasing the length (number of letters) of words is more likely to affect performance in the LVF than in the However, the parallel-sequential distinction merits closer scrutiny.
Priming vs. rhyming: Orthographic and phonological representations in the left and right hemispheres
Brain and Cognition, 2008
The right cerebral hemisphere has long been argued to lack phonological processing capacity. Recently, however, a sex difference in the cortical representation of phonology has been proposed, suggesting discrete left hemisphere lateralization in males and more distributed, bilateral representation of function in females. To evaluate this hypothesis and shed light on sex differences in the phonological processing capabilities of the left and right hemispheres, we conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 assessed phonological activation implicitly (masked homophone priming), testing 52 (M = 25, F = 27; mean age 19.23 years, SD 1.64 years) strongly right-handed participants. Experiment 2 subsequently assessed the explicit recruitment of phonology (rhyme judgement), testing 50 (M = 25, F = 25; mean age 19.67 years, SD 2.05 years) strongly right-handed participants. In both experiments the orthographic overlap between stimulus pairs was strictly controlled using DICE . Word-pair extraction for lexicography. In K. Oflazer & H. Somers (Eds.), Proceedings of the second international conference on new methods in language processing (pp. 45-55). Ankara: VCH], such that pairs shared (a) high orthographic and phonological similarity (e.g., not-KNOT); (b) high orthographic and low phonological similarity (e.g., pint-HINT); (c) low orthographic and high phonological similarity (e.g., use-EWES); or (d) low orthographic and low phonological similarity (e.g., kind-DONE). As anticipated, high orthographic similarity facilitated both left and right hemisphere performance, whereas the left hemisphere showed greater facility when phonological similarity was high. This difference in hemispheric processing of phonological representations was especially pronounced in males, whereas female performance was far less sensitive to visual field of presentation across both implicit and explicit phonological tasks. As such, the findings offer behavioural evidence indicating that though both hemispheres are capable of orthographic analysis, phonological processing is discretely lateralised to the left hemisphere in males, but available in both the left and right hemisphere in females.
Two left-hemisphere mechanisms in speech perception
Perception & Psychophysics, 1974
Right-ear advantages of different magnitudes occur systematically in dichotic listening for different phoneme classes and for certain phonemes according to their syllabic position. Such differences cannot be accounted for in terms of a single mechanism unique to the left hemisphere. Instead, at least two mechanisms are needed. One such device appears to be involved in the auditory analysis of transitions and other aspects of the speech signal. This device appears to be engaged for speech and nonspeech sounds alike. The other mechanism, the more accustomed "speech processor," appears to make all phonetic decisions in identifying the stimulus.
What is right-hemisphere contribution to phonological, lexico-semantic, and sentence processing
Neuroimage, 2011
To evaluate the relative role of left and right hemispheres (RH) and describe the functional anatomy of RH during ortholinguistic tasks, we re-analyzed the 128 papers of a former left-hemisphere (LH) meta-analysis . Of these, 59 articles reported RH participation, providing 105 RH language contrasts including 218 peaks compared to 728 on the left, a proportion reflecting the LH language dominance. To describe inter-hemispheric interactions, in each of the language contrasts involving both hemispheres, we distinguished between unilateral and bilateral peaks, i.e. having homotopic activation in the LH in the same contrast. We also calculated the proportion of bilateral peaks in the LH. While the majority of LH peaks were unilateral (79%), a reversed pattern was observed in the RH; this demonstrates that, in contrast to the LH, the RH works in an inter-hemispheric manner. To analyze the regional pattern of RH participation, these unilateral and bilateral peaks were spatially clustered for each language component. Most RH phonological clusters corresponded to bilateral recruitment of auditory and motor cortices. Notably, the motor representation of the mouth and phonological working memory areas were exclusively left-lateralized, supporting the idea that the RH does not host phonological representations. Right frontal participation was not specific for the language component involved and appeared related to the recruitment of attentional and working memory areas. The fact that RH participation during lexico-semantic tasks was limited to these executive activations is compatible with the hypothesis that active inhibition is exerted from the LH during the processing of meaning. Only during sentence/text processing tasks a specific unilateral RH-temporal involvement was noted, likely related to context processing. These results are consistent with split-brain studies that found that the RH has a limited lexicon, with no phonological abilities but active involvement in the processing of context.
Phonological processing of words in right- and left-handers
Brain and Cognition, 2004
It is commonly accepted that phonology is the exclusive domain of the left hemisphere. However, this pattern of lateralization, which posits a right visual field advantage, has been questioned by several studies. In fact, certain factors such as characteristics of the stimuli and subjectsÕ handedness can modulate the right visual field advantage. Thus, the goal of this study was to compare the hemispheric dynamics of right-handers and left-handers during a divided visual field presentation of words that varied in terms of their phonological transparency. For non-transparent words, the left hemisphere seems more competent in both handedness groups. With regard to transparent words, the right hemisphere of both groups also appears competent. Surprisingly, left-handers achieved optimal processing with a functionally isolated left hemisphere, whereas right-handers needed the participation of both hemispheres. The pattern of performance cannot be fully explained by either the callosal or the direct access model.