Abstract
The present study examined the functional specialization of cerebral hemispheres when subjects would process the words in various contexts. Subjects were asked to match two words expressed in Kanji in graphemic, phonemic or semantic contexts. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from C3, C4, P3, P4, of normal right-handed adults. In graphemic processing, P300 potentials calculated by grand average method were significantly larger in the right hemisphere than those in the left hemisphere. In contrast, P300 potentials were significantly larger in the left hemisphere in phonemic and semantic processing. These results suggested that when the words expressed in Kanji were recognized, the right hemisphere became superior in the graphemic processing while the left hemisphere superiority would be dominant in the phonemic and semantic processing.
