Interhemispheric communication of abstract and specific visual-form information

Pairs of letters were compared after being viewed in different visual fields (i.e. across-hemi spheres, AH) or in the same visual field (i.e. within-hemi sphere, WH). In an abstract-category comparison task, participants decided whether two letter exemplars belonged to the same abstract category (e.g. "k" and "K") or not (e.g. "k" and "P") and performed more accurately in AH trials than in WH trials. In a specific-exemplar comparison task, they decided whether two letters within the same abstract category were the same specific exemplars (e.g. "k" and "V) or not (e.g. "k" and "K") and performed more accurately in WH trials than in AH trials. This pattern of results was observed when the exemplars in a category were visually similar (e.g. "k" and "K", "a" and "a") but not when they were visually dissimilar (e.g. "a" and "A"). The reversed association technique was used to confirm the independence of subsystems underlying abstract category and specific-exemplar comparisons. Most important, the results support the theory that a specific-exemplar subsystem is more detrimentally affected by interhemispheric transfer of information than an abstract category subsystem. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.