Activation and maintenance of peripheral semantic features of unambiguous words after right hemisphere brain damage in adults

Background: The right cerebral hemisphere (RH) sustains activation of subordinate, secondary, less common, and/or distantly related meanings of words. Much of the pertinent data come from studies of homonyms, but some evidence also suggests that the RH has a unique maintenance function in relation to unambiguous nouns. In a divided visual field priming study, Atchley, Burgess, and Keeney (1999) reported that only left visual field/RH presentation yielded evidence of continuing activation of peripheral semantic features that were incompatible with the most common image or representation of their corresponding nouns (e.g., rotten for “apple”). Activation for weakly related features that were compatible with the dominant representation (e.g., crunchy) was sustained over time regardless of the visual field/hemisphere of initial stimulus input. Several studies report that unilateral right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) in adults affects the RH's meaning maintenance function, but this work also has centred on homonyms, and/or more recently metonymic and metaphoric polysemous words. Aims: The current investigation examined whether RHD deficits in processing secondary and/or distantly related meanings of words, typically observed in studies of homonyms, would extend to peripheral, weakly related semantic features of unambiguous nouns. Methods & Procedures: Participants were 28 adults with unilateral RHD from cerebrovascular accident, and 38 adults without brain damage. Participants listened to spoken sentences that ended with an unambiguous noun. Each sentence was followed by a spoken target phoneme string. Targets included peripheral semantic features of the sentence‐final noun that were either compatible or incompatible with the dominant mental images of the noun, and were presented at two intervals after that noun. A lexical decision task was used to gauge both the early activation and maintenance of activation for these weakly related semantic features. Outcomes & Results: Accuracy data demonstrated activation (priming) for both types of peripheral features, in both groups, shortly after presentation of the corresponding noun. Neither group evidenced continuing activation for either type of feature at a longer interval. These results are interpreted as reflecting rapid decay/poor maintenance of activation for distantly related features for both groups. The lack of a biasing context, however, did not provide an appropriate test for previously reported suppression deficits after RHD. Fast decay of activation of compatible semantic features was unexpected for the control group. Adults with RHD were less accurate than the control group at both test intervals for the features that are semantically more distant from their associated nouns (Related‐incompatible features). Accordingly, it is argued that the RHD group's poor maintenance of activation for these features reflects a deficit, rather than normal performance. The interpretation of results from this study is complicated by the lack of RT priming for either type of semantic feature, and for either participant group. Conclusions: The right cerebral hemisphere appears to be necessary for activating semantic features that are particularly distantly related to their corresponding lexical items, and for sustaining activation of these features in the absence of a biasing context. Because lexical processing has been linked with discourse comprehension for adults with RHD, more work in this area should enhance clinical management in the future.