Chisato Aoki, Adam Reeves
Hemispheric Differences
between Japanese Kanji and Kana
in a Picture-Word Matching Task
Abstract:Reaction times to match words to pictures were obtained from 48 Japanese adults, to
see whether Japanese Kanji (logographic) and Kana (syllabic) characters are
processed preferentially in the right (RH) and left (LH) hemispheres respectively.
This was so; when words and pictures were lateralized to the same hemisphere, Kanji
was processed faster by the RH, and Kana by the LH, although all hemisphere effects
disappeared when the picture was presented centrally. (To minimize any intrinsic LH
advantage, overt phonological processing was not required. There was no intrinsic
RH advantage for picture processing; pictures were processed equally well by both
hemispheres.) It seems that the RH has special semantic capabilities.