Semantic priming and verbal fluency after neurological damag

This study investigated the relationship between automatic and controlled access to semantic units after unilateral hemispheric damage. A semantic priming task was completed to assess participant's underlying store of lexical units via automatic access. Next, a series of verbal fluency tasks that were varied across semantic constraints (categorical, goal directed, and object attributes) were completed to assess participant's controlled and volitional access to lexical units. Performance in both tasks were analyzed for qualitative and quantitative differences between a participant with left cerebral hemisphere damage versus a participant with right cerebral hemisphere damage against a neurotypical control group. Results indicate no difference between groups in response to semantically related prime-target word pairs. Response sets in tasks of verbal fluency display many qualitative differences across all semantic constraints. No correlation of performance between the two tasks was found. Results are discussed in terms of asymmetries of lexical processing of the two hemispheres.