Novel word processing

People who text messages often shorten words by eliminating internal letters (e.g., "climate, clmte"). Although these novel representations (i.e., subset word forms) are not true words, sentence context may prime semantic activation. We hypothesized that if participants are presented with a context sentence prime containing a subset form target word, then participants' performance should improve when the stimulus is presented to the left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH) because the RH is less reliant on correct orthography than the left hemisphere (LH). We also hypothesized that participants' bias of processing novel stimuli is a function of visual field and hemisphere presentation. The results supported the hypothesis. When participants were shown subset word forms in the LVF/RH, their accuracy was significantly greater than when they were shown in the RVF/LH. Additionally, signal detection theory was applied to the results and substantiated the findings that participants' bias toward processing subset and orthographically correct words is a function of visual field and hemisphere presentation.