The examination of the visual-perceptual locus in hemispheric laterality of the word length effect using Korean visual word

Abstract

ABSTRACT Greater word length effects have been reported when a word was presented in the left visual field (LVF) than when presented in the right visual field (RVF). The current study employed 2 experiments to examine the visual-perceptual loci of asymmetric word length effect while testing the physical and linguistic length effects and the effect of visual angle increase at the RVF. Experiment 1 showed significant effects on the number of strokes in both VHFs (visual half fields) with the added significance of the number of syllables in the LVF, suggesting both parafoveal fields were affected by the physical length factors in contrast with the linguistic length factors, inducing asymmetric word length effects in the symmetrically presented word recognition in parafoveal vision. Experiment 2 widened the visual angle of the RVF presentation to test the differential effects of the visual-perceptual difficulty across the VHFs. It showed successful interruption at the RVF word recognition and comparable word length effects between the LVF and RVF. Therefore, this study suggests that the asymmetric word length effects in the parafoveal word recognition are attributable to the greater visual-perceptual difficulty at the LVF than at the RVF.