Word length and orthographic neighborhood size effects in the left and right cerebral hemispheres

Previous studies have reported an interaction between visual field (VF) and word length such that word recognition is affected more by length in the left VF (LVF) than in the right VF (RVF). A reanalysis showed that the previously reported effects of length were confounded with orthographic neighborhood size (N). In three experiments we manipulated length and N in lateralized lexical decision tasks. Results showed that length and VF interacted even with N controlled (Experiment 1); that N affected responses to words in the LVF but not the RVF (Experiment 2); and that when length and N were combined, length only affected performance in the LVF for words with few neighbors. ª 2002 Elsevier Science (USA) Key Words: orthographic neighborhood size; word length; hemispheric differences; laterali-zation; visual lexical decision