Atchley, R. A., Burgess, C., & Keeney, M. (1996). Summation Priming in the Cerebral Hemispheres: Effects of Practice. Brain and Cognition, 32, 202.

Presentation at the 1996 Tennet Conference. (Left to right) R. A. Atchley; M. Keeney; C. Burgess

Alone, the words lick, sprinkle, or mine would not lead to significant priming for the target word salt. When summated however, the combined effect of these three primes leads to activation of the target concept. Beeman et al. (1993) suggest that the locus of this summation priming is the right hemisphere. However, problems with stimulus selection require a reexamination of his results. In the present study the right hemisphere showed greater summation priming during subject's first exposure to the prime triplets. After practice with the primes, summation priming increased in the left hemisphere such that more priming occurred in the left hemisphere than in the right. This result is consistent with earlier studies reporting differences in the effect of practice across the two hemispheres (Hardyck, Tzeng & Wand, 1978; Sullivan & McKeever, 1985).