Faust M, Chiarello C
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Brain Lang. 1998 Jun 15;63(2):219-36. doi: 10.1006/brln.1997.1941.
This study explored the role of syntactic organization on semantic facilitation for target words presented to the right (R) and left (L) visual fields (VFs). Sentence and unstructured list primes were contrasted and, in each condition, the effect of intervening unrelated words on the durability of priming within each VF/hemisphere was investigated. Each prime contained a critical word which occurred Near (one intervening word) or Far (six intervening words) from the target word and was semantically related to it or a neutral control. It was hypothesized that, for word lists, facilitation for RVF target words would decrease with increasing distance between the critical and target words. For sentences no decrease in facilitation was expected for RVF targets. However, for LVF targets, facilitation was expected to decrease with distance both for sentences and lists with no greater priming for sentences than for lists. The results supported these hypotheses. Priming effects that spanned several intervening items were found only when the primes were well-structured, normal sentences and the target words were presented to the RVF. These results suggest that while word-level priming processes are available to both hemispheres, the left hemisphere makes greater use of message-level syntactic and semantic mechanisms for sentence comprehension.
本研究探讨了句法组织对呈现给右视野（R）和左视野（L）的目标词语义促进作用的影响。对比了句子和非结构化列表启动刺激，并在每种条件下，研究了插入无关词对每个视野/半球内启动刺激持续性的影响。每个启动刺激都包含一个关键单词，该单词出现在目标词附近（中间隔一个词）或较远位置（中间隔六个词），并且与目标词语义相关或为中性对照。研究假设，对于单词列表，右视野目标词的促进作用会随着关键单词与目标词之间距离的增加而降低。对于句子，预计右视野目标词的促进作用不会降低。然而，对于左视野目标词，预计句子和列表的促进作用都会随着距离的增加而降低，且句子的启动刺激不会比列表更强。结果支持了这些假设。仅当启动刺激是结构良好的正常句子且目标词呈现给右视野时，才发现跨越几个插入项目的启动效应。这些结果表明，虽然单词层面的启动过程在两个半球都存在，但左半球在句子理解中更多地利用了信息层面的句法和语义机制。
