The current study was designed to examine the nature of lexical retrieval within and between cerebral hemispheres when the semantic system is challenged by an inconsistent semantic context in a divided visual field priming task. Double primes consisting of an ambiguous word and an associate of its dominant or subordinate meaning created a semantic context prior to target presentation (e.g., FOOT-SHOE or FOOT-INCH). Target words, which were presented 100 ms following the onset of the prime words, were consistent with, inconsistent with, or unrelated to the context established by the prime words. Prime words as well as targets were lateralized, and both ipsilateral and contralateral prime pair-target conditions were analyzed in order to examine the influence that each hemisphere exerts on its counterpart. Results suggest that the left hemisphere activated a broad array of information following the establishment of a dominant context, including inconsistent targets, while concurrently inhibiting inconsistent targets in the contralateral right hemisphere. The left hemisphere was not as broadly activated following a subordinate prime context, with significant priming found only in the consistent condition, and it did not inhibit or prime any targets contra laterally. When primes were projected to the left visual field-right hemisphere, no significant priming occurred in either hemisphere, although subordinate targets were identified significantly faster ipsilaterally regardless of consistency with the prime context (i.e., subordinate consistent and dominant inconsistent conditions), whereas the reverse was true contralaterally. The results suggest a reciprocal interaction between the hemispheres resembling Cook's (1986) topographical inhibitory model of interhemispheric processing.
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