Face and word processing have traditionally been thought to rely on highly lateralized cognitive processes, with face processing relying more heavily on the right and and word processing more on the left hemisphere. This builds on evidence from neuropsychological case studies of patients with pure alexia and pure prosopagnosia, as well as functional imaging data. The aim of this study was to investigate the lateralisation of face and word processing in patients with posterior cerebral artery stroke selected purely on the basis of lesion localisation.
58 patients and 31 controls were tested with the WOF test, a novel paradigm assessing face, word and object recognition, as well as with the Cambridge Face Memory Test and a reading-out-loud task.
For most conditions of the WOF test and for the CFMT, there was no significant difference between the left and right hemisphere patient groups. Also, the proportion of patients in each group with face recognition deficits and visual word processing deficits, respectively, did not differ significantly. In the reading-out-loud task, however, the left hemisphere group performed significantly worse than the right hemisphere group.
This suggests that face and word processing may be supported by processes that are more bilaterally distributed than previously thought.