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Abstract:
Previc (1991) has argued for functional specialisation in the
lower and upper visual fields, wherein the lower visual field has
developed a functional advantage in the processing of nearby
manipulable objects, while the upper visual hemifield field has
been specialised towards identifying stimuli in extrapersonal
space. The present study has sought to corroborate the suggested
visual field specialisation by selecting 80 manipulable and 80
non-manipulable objects, half of which are commonly found in the
lower visual field (e.g. broom/doghouse), and half which are found
in the upper visual field (e.g. ladder/roof). Selected items were
presented as words which were displayed either above or below to
fixation, in a lexical decision task. Conforming to the predictions
from Previc visual field theory, a relative (dis)advantage was
observed for (non-)manipulable words when presented in the lower
visual field (irrespective of normal visual field occurence),
compared to when the same words were presented in the upper visual
field. It is important to note that the present results were
obtained with words, instead of the actual objects themselves. This
suggests that not only there is a visual field difference in the
processing of manipulable vs. non-manipulable information, but also
that the organisation of semantic representation closely follows
this functional specialisation in the visual system.
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