The role of semantic, orthographic, and phonological prime information in unilateral visual neglect.

The present study examined what type of lexical information could be extracted from the patient's neglected field. Patients (N =32) and age-matched controls (N =32) were required to name a foveally presented word after a parafoveal prime was presented either to the left or right visual field. Primes were identical to the target (KITE-KITE), related to the target at the level of semantics (DOG-CAT), orthography (LEMON-DEMON), phonology (ACHE-LAKE), or both orthography and phonology (HIDE-RIDE). Only when the target was semantically related to the prime were consistently reliable priming effects found in the patients, even in the patients' neglected visual field. These results demonstrate that semantic information can be extracted from the patients' neglected field.