The influence of phonological and orthographic information on auditory lexical access in brain-damaged patients: A preliminary investigation

Abstract

The effects of phonlogy and orthography on auditory lexical access were examined in fluent and non-fluent aphasics and right brain-damaged patients using an auditory lexical decision task. An effect of orthography independent of brain damage was suggested by the findings that, overall, responses were faster to words preceded by primes that were both phonologically and orthographically realted to the target than to those that were unrelated, whereas phonologically related primes alone did not facilitate reaction times. Responses were also slower relative to the unrealted condition to targets that were orthographically but not phonologically related to their primes. These results were interpreted as counter-evidence to the claim that orthographic effects are laterlized to the left hemisphere (Zecker et al. 1986). The results concerning the effect of phonology were equivocal.