ABSTRACT
In order to investigate this possibility, we carried out a third series of experiments, in which the subject was presented with written names instead of pictures as the visual target “match” for the musical “sample”. If in the first two experiments the left hemispheres had named the sound and then had matched the picture to the name, we would expect the left hemisphere to be faster for word targets than for picture targets. The results showed that, in fact, the left hemisphere was faster when pictures were flashed than when words were flashed. Although this difference did not reach statistical significance, the left hemisphere certainly was not faster for words than for pictures. These results argued strongly against covert verbal mediation as the basis of left hemisphere superiority in timbre perception. As expected, the right hemisphere was significantly faster for pictures than for words.3
