ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1591311
Interhemispheric Interactions in Visual Word Recognition: The Role of Multiple Meanings
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Gwangju, Republic of Korea
- 2Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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The current study investigated the influence of the number of meanings on visual word recognition, with a particular focus on hemispheric dynamics. By reanalyzing parafoveal lexical decision data from Kim et al. (2022a) alongside Korean lexical variable data (Kim et al., 2020), we examined how words with a high versus low number of meanings affect right visual field advantage (RVFA) and bilateral redundancy gain (BRG). The results revealed that words with a greater number of meanings exhibited a stronger RVFA and reduced BRG compared to words with fewer meanings. These findings suggest that the facilitatory effects associated with multiple meanings are more pronounced in the left hemisphere (LH) than in the right hemisphere (RH). Furthermore, the increased lateralization of processing within the LH appears to diminish the need for interhemispheric interactions, leading to decreased coordination between the hemispheres. These results imply that the number of meanings in words shapes interhemispheric dynamics during visual word recognition.The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to theoretical models of visual word recognition and hemispheric differences in language processing.
Keywords: Hemispheric Dynamics, semantic priming, syntactic priming, Lexical decision tasks, Serial Processing Models, Visual half-field study Number of Meanings, hemispheric interactions, visual word processing
Received: 11 Mar 2025; Accepted: 09 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kim and Nam. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sangyub Kim, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, 500-757, Gwangju, Republic of Korea
Kichun Nam, Korea University, Seoul, 136-701, Republic of Korea
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