Overestimation of Phonological Judgments on the Right Side of Space

Turriziani, Patrizia; Santostefano, Alessia; Catania, Angela; Oliveri, Massimiliano · 2023 · DOAJ

DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13081123

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Summary

This study investigates whether spatial attentional biases, previously documented in semantic processing, also extend to phonological judgments. While healthy subjects typically exhibit a leftward bias (pseudoneglect) in physical line bisection and number comparison tasks, prior research indicated a rightward bias in semantic distance judgments. The authors aimed to determine if this rightward overestimation of distance applies to phonological processing and whether it is specific to words with semantic content or generalizes to non-semantic linguistic stimuli. The research comprised two experiments involving 41 healthy, right-handed native Italian speakers. Participants viewed triplets of stimuli arranged horizontally on a computer screen, with a central item and two flanking items positioned at 5° of eccentricity to the left and right. They were asked to identify which side contained the word phonologically closer to the central item. Experiment 1 utilized real words and pronounceable pseudowords, creating conditions where phonological distance was identical (Same), different (Different), or vastly different (Very Different, involving consonant strings). Experiment 2 replicated the procedure using only pronounceable pseudowords and consonant strings to isolate phonological processing from semantic representation. In Experiment 1, analysis of error rates revealed a significant interaction between condition and spatial location. Participants exhibited a rightward bias in the "Different" condition, frequently misidentifying the left side as having the shorter phonological distance when the right side actually did. This pattern indicates an overestimation of the phonological distance on the right side of space. A similar, though less pronounced, bias appeared in the "Same" condition. No significant bias was observed in the "Very Different" condition, likely due to the obvious disparity in distance. Reaction times did not differ significantly between left and right targets. Experiment 2 confirmed these findings; participants using only pseudowords and consonant strings also overestimated phonological distance on the right side, demonstrating that the bias persists even in the absence of semantic meaning. The results demonstrate that phonological judgments are subject to a rightward spatial bias, mirroring previously observed biases in semantic tasks. This finding suggests that both semantic and phonological information are internally mapped onto spatial representations, likely engaging specialized attentional resources in the left hemisphere. The study expands the understanding of how linguistic processing interacts with spatial cognition, indicating that attentional asymmetries are not limited to visual or numerical domains but extend to the fundamental components of language processing.

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• multisensory crossmodal