Cl. Leonard et Sr. Baum, THE INFLUENCE OF PHONOLOGICAL AND ORTHOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ON AUDITORY LEXICAL ACCESS IN BRAIN-DAMAGED PATIENTS - A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION, Aphasiology, 11(11), 1997, pp. 1031-1041
The effects of phonology and orthography on auditory lexical access we
re examined in fluent and non-fluent aphasics and right brain-damaged
patients using an auditory lexical decision task. An effect of orthogr
aphy independent of brain damage was suggested by the findings that, o
verall, responses were faster to words preceded by primes that were bo
th phonologically and orthographically related to the target than to t
hose that were unrelated, whereas phonologically related primes alone
did not facilitate reaction times. Responses were also slower relative
to the unrelated condition to targets that were orthographically but
not phonologically related to their primes. These results were interpr
eted as counter-evidence to the claim that orthographic effects are la
teralized to the left hemisphere (Zecker et al. 1986). The results con
cerning the effect of phonology were equivocal.