Viewing conditions and hemisphere asymmetry for the lexical decision

Exposure duration, retinal eccentricity and stimulus size were systematically varied to assess the contribution of viewing conditions to the lexical decision asymmetry. Contrary to Sergent's hypothesis (Psychol. Bull. 93, 481-512), the RVF advantage was unaltered over the range of conditions tested. This suggests that hemisphere differences in the ability to extract information from degraded signals cannot account for the asymmetry in this task. The results are compatible with the view that the lexical decision asymmetry arises from a relatively late stage of processing in which the information is no longer represented in sensory form.