Congruency, attentional set, and laterality effects with emotional words.

Abstract

The present study investigated the influence of attention and word-emotion congruency on auditory asymmetries with stimuli that include verbal and emotional components. Words were presented dichotically to 80 participants and were pronounced in either congruent or incongruent emotional tones. Participants were asked to identify the presence of a target word or emotion under 1 of 2 conditions. The blocked condition required detection of a word or emotional target in separate blocks. In the randomized condition, the target was changed across trials by means of a postcue. A right-ear advantage (REA) and a left-ear advantage (LEA) were found for word and emotion targets, respectively. However, the finding of a Condition x Stimulus Type x Ear x Congruency interaction indicated that in the randomized condition, a REA was obtained for words when the stimuli were congruent and a LEA was observed for emotions when the stimuli were incongruent. The findings suggest that randomizing the target reduced the influence of the attentional set established by blocking the target. It is likely that this promoted the detection of hemispheric interference in the randomized condition.

The symmetry of visual fields in chromatic discrimination

“…Separate from the problem of exogenous cues is the possibility that the task itself, by engaging one hemisphere disproportionately, may bias endogenous attention to contralateral space (Bryden & Mondor, 1991;Kinsbourne, 1970;Reuter-Lorenz, Kinsbourne, & Moscovitch, 1990;Techentin & Voyer, 2007). In some studies of laterality, a secondary task -e.g.…”

On the perception of sarcasm in dichotic listening.

“…As an example of salient meaning, Giora et al (2000) argued that, even though the word 'bank' can refer both to a financial institution and a riverside, the institution interpretation may be more salient to a city dweller than the riverside definition (Giora et al, 2000). Techentin and Voyer (2007) investigated the influence of emotional content and word salience on the REA typically found in language processing. Techentin and Voyer generally followed the method originally proposed by Grimshaw (1998) as they dichotically presented emotional words (i.e., "glad," "mad," and "sad" as emotional words, and "fad" as a neutral word) pronounced in either congruent or incongruent emotional tones (e.g., angry, happy, neutral, or sad).…”

Influence of separate and mixed experimental designs on reaction times to two simple visual stimuli.

“…More importantly, they suggest that this difference can be compensated by the adoption of specific attentional sets, namely paying more attention to the task when the line is the go target and less attention when the cross is the go target, when this is viable, such as occurs in the separate testing context. Techentin and Voyer (2007) used a similar explanation to account for the reduction of the influence of congruency they observed when blocking their targets.…”

“…Investigating the influence of word-emotion congruency on auditory asymmetries, Techentin and Voyer (2007) obtained different results according to the experimental design adopted. They compared a blocked design (with the detection of a word target or of an emotional target in different blocks of trials) with a randomized design (in which the target was changed across trials) and found certain interferences of congruency only in the randomized designed.…”