Hemispheric asymmetry in word recognition: the effects of frequency and imageability

Although the left hemisphere is mainly involved in language processing, it is now well recognised that the right hemisphere also has some linguistic a bilities. The aim of this work was to investigate the effects of two variab les, frequency and imageability in word recognition when words are shown in the left or right visual Field. In a lexical decision experiment words of different frequency (high and low frequency) and imageability (concrete and abstract) were presented to normal subjects in the left or right visual fi eld. The results show no interaction between the visual field and word freq uency, but a significant interaction between the visual field and imageabil ity. The latter result indicates that the right hemisphere ha abilities to recognise concrete words but has difficulties in recognising abstract words .