Qualitative Hemispheric Differences in Semantic Category Matching

• Published in: Brain and language Vol. 70; no. 1; pp. 119 - 131
• Main Authors: Taylor, Kirsten I., Brugger, Peter, Weniger, Dorothea, Regard, Marianne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 15.10.1999; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Anatomical correlates of behavior; Aphasia; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain - physiology; Cerebral Dominance; Functional Laterality; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Lexical Access; Male; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Semantic Processing; Semantics; Visual Fields - physiology; Visual Stimulation; Vocabulary; Human; Hemispheric specialization; Hemisphere dominance; Language; Semantics; Semantic network; Central nervous system; Cognition; Matching task; Laterality; Categorization; Brain (vertebrata)
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1006/brln.1999.2148

A unilateral category matching task with words as stimuli was employed to investigate semantic processing in the right and left hemispheres (RH, LH). An overall right visual field (RVF)/LH dominance was observed and performances were better than chance, also in the left visual field (LVF)/RH. A qualitative analysis of reaction times with individual differences multidimensional scaling (INDSCAL) revealed that LVF/RH INDSCAL solutions were significantly more differentiated in structure than RVF/LH solutions in terms of number and size of dimensions. These findings support a depth of activation hypothesis of hemispheric processing, with the LH rapidly and focally and the RH slowly and diffusely activating the semantic network.