Semantic and phonemic priming in the cerebral hemispheres

Interhemispheric Communication via Direct Connections for Alternative Meanings of Ambiguous Words

“…(Collins) Abernethy and Coney (1993) found cross-hemisphere facilitation when a prime projected to the LVF was followed by an associated RVF target, even though there was no concomitant within-hemisphere facilitation for LVF-LVF presentations of these pairs. We also found LVF-RVF facilitation without LVF-LVF facilitation for category exemplars confounded by association ((Collins) Abernethy & Coney, 1990). The findings from these two studies are consistent with a tenet of the direct connections model that the processing of a word within the right hemisphere can activate its associates in the left hemisphere independently of any activation of those associates within the right hemisphere itself.…”

“…In this instance, it appears that an ambiguous word projected to the right hemisphere directly activated a range of its alternative meanings in the left hemisphere, without activating these meanings within the right hemisphere itself. LVF-RVF facilitation has also been found without LVF-LVF facilitation for category exemplars ((Collins) Abernethy & Coney, 1990) and associates ((Collins) Abernethy & Coney, 1993). Taken together, these findings indicate that a word directed to the right hemisphere can activate a range of meanings in the left hemisphere independently of the activation of these aspects of meaning in the right hemisphere itself.…”

“…Hardyck, Chiarello, Dronkers, and Simpson (1985) specifically investigated this question and concluded that lexical decisions occur in the hemisphere of input and do not require shared hemispheric resources. Similarly, Rodel et al (1992) as well as (Collins) Abernethy and Coney (1990) concluded that their results are inconsistent with the idea that hemispheric differences in performance on the linguistic tasks they employed are due simply to degradation through callosal relay. Confirmation for such findings can be found in clinical studies, where it has been demonstrated that split brain patients are able to make lexical decisions for stimuli presented to either hemisphere (e.g., Zaidel, 1983).…”

“…A fundamental premise of this model, for which there is ample evidence, is that both hemispheres can make lexical decisions without the necessity for callosal relay of information, and words are primarily encoded in the hemisphere to which they are initially projected (e.g., (Collins) Abernethy & Coney, 1990;Chiarello, 1988;Zaidel et al, 1988). From this premise, the direct connections model proposes that direct callosal connections exist between concepts in one hemisphere and particular related concepts in the opposite hemisphere, where interhemispheric communication at the sematic level can occur via activation spreading through these direct connections, rather than by transference of a coded form of the prime from one hemisphere to the other.…”

Relaciones conceptuales: definición del constructo, bases neuroanatómicas y formas de evaluación/Conceptual relations: construct definition, neuroanatomical basis and ways of assessment

“…Desde el punto de vista conductual, no hallaron facilitación taxonómica pero sí temática. Si bien esto es consistente con otros estudios (Abernethy & Coney, 1993;Bouaffre & Faita-Ainseba, 2007), hay trabajos que indican que el efecto de facilitación temática suele observarse en SOA cortos mientras que el de facilitación taxonómica aparece en SOA largos (Collins, 1999;Kotz, Cappa, von Cramon, & Friederici, 2002). Cabe mencionar que en el estudio de Sass y colaboradores se utilizaron SOA cortos, lo cual impide los mecanismos post-léxicos necesarios para establecer relaciones taxonómicas (Vivas, 2012).…”