Subjects were presented with either verbal (letters) or nonverbal (outline forms) stimuli to their left or right cerebral hemispheres. Verbal items presented with a lateral masking stimulus were identified more quickly and accurately when presented to the right hemisphere rather than to the left. When the letters were presented without a masking stimulus, weak hemispheric effects were obtained. Nonverbal forms demonstrated faster reaction time and fewer errors for right-hemisphere presentations under both masked and unmasked conditions. Retinal locus of the display item was also varied and produced faster responding with fewer errors when the stimulus was presented foveally rather than peripherally under all display conditions. These effects were attributed to the use of a manual response procedure that effectively reduced the ability of subjects to employ names for the stimulus objects.The usual paradigm for measuring hemispheric processing effects on the accuracy of stimulus identification consists of tachistoscopically presenting items in either the right or left visual field. If the subject is fixating on a central point and the stimulus is presented at an exposure duration of less than 250 msec, the item is projected to the hemisphere contralateral to the visual field in which it appears. The subject is then required to indicate, either verbally or by pointing to the test item from an array of possible items, what he saw. Considering identification studies that presented stimulus items to only one visual field on any given trial, verbal items are correctly identified more often when they are projected to the left than when they are projected to the right hemisphere. These verbal stimulus materials have included single letters (Bryden, 1965(Bryden, , 1966