Embedded words in visual word recognition: Does the left hemisphere see the rain in brain?

• DOI: 10.1037/a0020224
• Publication Date: 2010-08-30T19:10:25Z
• Authors: Samantha F. McCor...; Colin J. Davis; Marc Brysbaert
• Keywords: Adult; Fovea Centralis; Concept Formation; SPLIT FOVEA; COMMUNICATION; INTERHEMISPHERIC-TRANSFER; Vocabulary; Functional Laterality; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; PROGRAM; semantic categorization; Humans; Vision, Ocular; Faculty of Science\Psychology; Analysis of Variance; Brain; LEXICAL DECISION; DELETION NEIGHBORS; MODEL; Pattern Recognition, Visual; embedded word recognition; split fovea; Visual Perception; EYE-MOVEMENTS; Visual Fields; Photic Stimulation

To examine whether interhemispheric transfer during foveal word recognition entails a discontinuity between the information presented to the left and right of fixation, we presented target words in such a way that participants fixated immediately left or right of an embedded word (as in gr*apple, bull*et) or in the middle of an embedded word (grapp*le, bu*llet). Categorization responses to target words were faster and more accurate in a congruent condition (in which the embedded word was associated with the same response; e.g., Does bullet refer to an item of clothing?) than in an incongruent condition (e.g., Does bullet refer to a type of animal?). However, the magnitude of this effect did not vary as a function of position of fixation, relative to the embedded word, as might be expected if information from the 2 visual fields was initially split over the cerebral hemispheres and integrated only late in the word identification process. Equivalent results were observed in Experiment 1 (long stimulus duration) and Experiment 2 (in which stimulus duration was 200 ms; i.e., less than the time required to initiate a refixation).