The effect of complexity upon hemispheric specialization for reading Chinese characters

A number of reports in the literature have suggested that there is a right hemisphere advantage for the processing of single Chinese or Japanese characters. There are, nonetheless, many studies which have produced contradictory findings, suggesting that the factor or factors underlying the lateral asymmetry have not been clearly identified. The present study investigated the proposal that visual complexity of single Chinese characters, as measured by stroke number, was related to a right hemisphere advantage for processing this material. However, increasing the level of complexity of the characters was found to be related to the development of a left hemisphere advantage, thus clearly disconfirming the proposal. It is argued that the results are more satisfactorily interpreted in terms of the relationship between hemisphere specialization and the spatial frequency of the stimuli.