Poster C85, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Phonological Visual Word Recognition in the Two Cerebral Hemispheres: Evidence from a Masked Priming Study with Cross-Script Pseudohomophones as Primes
Orna Peleg1, Mor Moran-Mizrahi1, Dafna Bergerbest2;1Tel-Aviv University, 2The Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo
To test the separate and combined abilities of the two cerebral hemispheres to activate phonological information during the initial stages of visual word recognition, the present study utilized a masked phonological priming paradigm, with cross-script pseudohomophones as primes. In the study, Hebrew-English bilinguals were asked to perform a lexical decision task on Hebrew targets (e.g., אגם /agam/ [lake]) briefly preceded by cross-script pseudohomophone primes, i.e., Hebrew words written phonetically with English letters (e.g., אגם = agam). The primes were either phonologically identical to the targets (agam – אגם), or unrelated to the targets (unrelated pairs were created by re-pairing primes and targets that were clearly not related in any way). In Experiment 1, the targets were presented in the central visual field to both hemispheres. In Experiment 2, the targets were presented either in the right visual field to the left hemisphere (LH) or in the left visual field to the right hemisphere (RH). Consistent with interactive models, such as the bi-modal interactive activation model (Grainger & Ferrand, 1994), in both experiments, targets were easier to recognize in the phonologically related condition than in the unrelated condition. Importantly, these pre-lexical phonological effects occurred even though the primes and the targets were orthographically dissimilar (i.e., written in completely different alphabets). Such results indicate not only that sub-lexical orthographic representations automatically activate their corresponding phonological representations, but also that these automatic bidirectional orthographic-phonological interactions operate in a language non-selective manner (e.g., Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002). Interestingly, no difference was found between the two hemispheres. That is, phonological effects were obtained irrespective of visual field presentation. Thus, despite the critical role assumed for the LH in activating phonological codes during the processing of written words (e.g., Peleg & Eviatar, 2012), the current evidence suggests that both hemispheres are able to access phonological codes during the early moments of visual word recognition. It is possible that when the visual word recognition process can benefit from both phonological and orthographic sources of information, the RH tends to rely more heavily on orthographic information (e.g., Halderman & Chiarello, 2005; Peleg & Eviatar, 2009, 2012, 2017); However, when orthographic information is completely nullified, as in the case of the present study, the RH is more inclined to process phonological information (e.g., Halderman, 2011). Additional studies are needed in order to clarify the conditions under which phonology affects visual word recognition in the RH.
Themes: Reading, Multilingualism
Method: Behavioral