Hemispheric asymmetry in accessing word meanings: concrete and abstract nouns

The present experiments investigated hemispheric differences in the brain in accessing concrete and abstract word meanings. For this purpose, an automatic semantic priming paradigm was used with a short stimulus onset asynchrony between prime and target (250 msec.) as well as a low proportion of related trials (20%). Analysis showed that for concrete nouns, priming effects were observed in both hemispheres. There was greater priming in the right hemisphere, suggesting hemispheric differences in accessing semantic representations of concrete nouns. For abstract nouns, on the other hand, priming patterns in the right hemisphere were identical to those in the left hemisphere, suggesting that information about abstract nouns projected to the right hemisphere may be transferred to the dominant left hemisphere for further processing.