The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Hemispheric Dominance of Semantic Priming Effect
Language	J
AuthorList	Chiharu Niki, Yoshitaka Ohigashi
Affiliation	Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 17 (4), 259-269, 2001
Received	May 3, 2001
Accepted	Oct 17, 2001
Abstract	Hemispheric dominance in the priming effect was investigated in three studies using lateralized picture and word presentation. In Experiment 1, a picture was primed, and at the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 250ms, subjects were required to judge a target picture according to object decision. Experiment 2 used words as primes, and subjects judged a target picture according to object decision. In Experiment 3, lexical decision was required for a target word following a primed picture. Results revealed a clear semantic priming effect in the left visual field when both primes and targets were presented in the left visual field. Although other investigations using only word stimuli show a consistent right visual field dominance for the semantic priming effect, there is reason to assume that the obtained left visual field dominance in this present study reflects the existence of visuo-perceptual semantic system in the right hemisphere.
Keywords	Semantic priming effect, Hemispheric dominance, Object Decision Task (ODT), Lexical Decision Task (LDT), Semantic memory