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Related Experiment Videos

Concreteness: nouns, verbs, and hemispheres.

Z Eviatar1, L Menn, E Zaidel

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
|December 1, 1990
PubMed
Summary

The brain processes concrete nouns more easily than abstract ones, especially in the right hemisphere. No difference was found for verb processing, suggesting imageability influences noun recognition.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • The brain's processing of concrete versus abstract words is a key area in cognitive science.
  • Understanding hemispheric specialization in language processing is crucial for cognitive models.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the preferential processing of concrete vs. abstract nouns and active vs. static verbs.
  • To examine hemispheric differences using a lateralized lexical decision task in normal and split-brain subjects.

Main Methods:

  • Lateralized lexical decision task administered to 32 normal and 4 commissurotomized subjects.
  • Analysis of visual field processing for nouns and verbs.
  • Comparison of word and nonword recognition biases between sexes.

Main Results:

  • Both normal and split-brain subjects showed a concreteness effect for nouns across visual fields.
  • The right hemisphere in commissurotomized subjects selectively processed concrete nouns.
  • No activeness effect was observed for verbs in either group, supporting an imageability-based interpretation.

Conclusions:

  • The concreteness effect is likely based on imageability rather than multisensory representations.
  • Lexical decision tasks involve complex, partly independent components for word and nonword decisions.
  • Observed sex differences in visual field biases suggest strategic, not functional, differences in lateralization.

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