What helps us determine whether a word is a noun or a verb, without conscious awareness? We report on cues in the way individual English words are spelled, and, for the first time, identify their neural correlates via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We used a lexical decision task with trisyllabic nouns and verbs containing…

One explanation for the inconsistencies in research examining the sentence comprehension abilities of the right hemisphere (RH) is the presence of confounding variables that have generally served to disadvantage the processing capacities of the RH. As such, the present study aimed to investigate hemispheric differences in the use of message-level…

We examined the effect of perceptual training on a well-established hemispheric asymmetry in speech processing. Eighteen listeners were trained to use a within-category difference in voice onset time (VOT) to cue talker identity. Successful learners (n = 8) showed faster response times for stimuli presented only to the left ear than for those…

Semantic priming refers to a reduction in the reaction time to identify or make a judgment about a stimulus that has been immediately preceded by a semantically related word or picture and is thought to result from a partial overlap in the semantic associates of the two words. A semantic priming lexical decision task using spoken words was…