USE OF MAGNITUDE-ESTIMATION SCALING FOR PREDICTING HEMISPHERIC PROCESSING OF LEXICAL DECISIONS

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness and validity of magnitude-estimation scaling as an alternative to a traditional, so mewhat more cumbersome reaction-time procedure in the assessment of he mispheric processing asymmetry. Lexical decision vocal reaction times and magnitude-estimation scaling values were obtained for 16 normal su bjects to tachistoscopically presented concrete and abstract words. An alysis of variance showed identical interactions of field x stimuli fo r each dependent variable while all pair-wise correlations between the se measures were significant. Magnitude-estimation scaling may be a se nsitive measure of visual psychophysical differences in hemispheric pr ocessing and may circumvent problems with variance of latencies associ ated with disordered populations.