Orthographic and phonological facilitation from unattended words: evidence for bilateral processing

This study investigated hemisphere differences in sensitivity to orthographic and phonological similarity using a task that did not require deliberate metalinguistic comparisons between words. Two experiments investigated the influence of an unattended distractor item on the pronunciation of target words in the right visual field (RVF) and left visual field (LVF) in neurologically intact persons. Word and pseudoword distractors that were both orthographically and phonologically similar to the target word produced equivalent facilitation across visual fields (Exp. 1). When orthographic and phonological influences were separated in Exp. 2, each dimension produced reliable facilitation, and to the same extent in each visual field. These results, and others in the literature, are difficult to reconcile with the view that the intact right hemisphere is completely unable to access phonology from print. If subsequent research confirms these findings, it would suggest that passive activation of phonology in reading can be dissociated from articulatory mechanisms, and that left hemisphere superiority in some phonological judgements may depend more on the availability of articulatory rehearsal than on privileged access to phonological codes.