Hemispheric asymmetries in the identification of band-pass filtered letters

Abstract

Processing of band-pass filtered letters in the left versus right cerebral hemispheres (LH vs. RH) was examined. The present experiments constituted a partial replication of a study in which Peterzell, Harvey, and Hardyck (1989) found no hemispheric differences in accuracy or reaction time (RT) as a function of spatial frequency. However, methodological limitations of their study (e.g., the possibility that subjects were engaged in a detection, not identification, task) may have obscured possible hemispheric differences. We addressed these problems in the present study, obtaining significant hemisphere × spatial frequency interactions for RT andd', with RH advantages at low frequencies and LH advantages at high frequencies; however, these effects were not large in magnitude and were often restricted to particular dependent variables, stimulus sizes, and so forth. Hemispheric differences in response bias were also found.