Abstract: Event related potentials were recorded while 13 normal young subject s (age range 23 32 years) were recognizing Chinese words presented in either aud i tory or visual modality. The "sustained central negativity" (SCN) elicited by sp oken words and the "late positive component" (LPC) evoked by written ones were observed, this suggested different retrieval mechanism between them. The old/new effect was significant for both recognition of written and spoken Chines e characters, that is, the old items yielded more positive going ERP components than did the new items. However, the effect in the sound recalling is dominant o ver the right hemisphere and that for the written words distributes at the left parietal , po sterior temporal scalp and right occipital area. The result of the present exper imen t proposes the concept that the "dominant hemisphere" is hard to conclude the mu ltidimensional and dynamic relationship between hemispheres and it is necessary to be modified.

Key words: Memory, Recognition, Event related potential (ER P), Sustained central negativity (SCN), Late positive component (LPC)