Abstract

Hemispheric functional localization in the processing of Hangul words was assessed using recognition and category judgement tasks. Stimulus words were briefly presented in the right or left visual field to make the stimulus information processed in the left or right hemisphere, respectively. In addition to the visual field, stimulus association value, similarity of visual feature, and category of words were used as independent variables in order to see how the hemispheric functional localization, if any, asymmetrically varies on them. Reaction times for the recognition task and category judgement task were measured as dependent variables. Results of the recognition task show that the effect of visual field is nut significant implying that hemispheric dominance may not appear in the process of recognizing Hangul words. In order to further investigate whether the unexpected absence of left hemisphere dominance, i.e. in order to see whether the subjects strategically matched only the visual features of stimuli, similarity between the target and recognition stimuli in terms of visual features were manipulated. There was a weak trend that higher similarity results in mort left hemipheric dominance, although such trend is not statistically significant. On the contrary, in the category judgement task the reaction time when the stimulus was projected into the left hemisphere was shorter than when it was projected into the right hemisphere. This result implies that the left hemisphere may take an Important role when a Hangul word requires semantic processing. In conclusion, results of this study suggest that both hemispheres may contribute to the early processing of Hangul words and hemispheric functional dominance may depend on the required level of word processing.