Parafoveal Words are Effective in Both Hemifields: Preattentive Processing of Semantic and Phonological Codes

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Abstract
What effect may an unattended word have during a single fixation? Attention was selectively directed to a word exposed for 50 ms by the demand to make a rapid lexical decision response, and during the same presentation a second word was displayed approximately 2.3 deg of visual angle away on the same horizontal axis. The second word was backwards and forwards masked by a random-dot display, and was described to subjects as a distractor which was to be ignored. Although no response was required to this word, it was found to influence response latency to the attended word according to the semantic relationship which existed between the two. They interfered with the lexical decision response when the two words were related in meaning and also when they sounded as if they were related in meaning. These effects argue for automatic processing of the meaning of printed words presented in either visual hemifield, and for their automatic phonological activation.

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