A replication attempt of hemispheric differences in semantic-relatedness judgments (Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003)

In a study by Zwaan and Yaxley (2003, Cognition, 87, B79-B86), participants judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs presented one above the other either in the left or right visual field with all related pairs requiring right-handed responses. If the vertical orientation of the word pairs matched their referents' typical vertical orientation ("roof" above "basement") a match effect was observed, but only when the word pair was presented in the left visual field. We replicated this study with response side as an additional factor and found a main effect of match, as well as a Simon effect with faster responses when the required response matched the visual field in which the word pair was presented. We did not, however, observe an interaction between the match effect and the visual field. This challenges the assumption that coarse semantic representations, including spatial properties of objects, are mainly processed in the right hemisphere.