Role of hand dominance in mapping preferences for emotional-valence words to keypress responses

Song, Xiaolei; Chen, Jing; Proctor, Robert W.

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.08.007

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Only recently have manipulations been devised to disambiguate between spatialization and polarity correspondence accounts of RT congruity effects in binary classification tasks (e.g., Santiago & Lakens, ; Song, Chen, & Proctor, ). Future research could adapt these manipulations to the dimension of emotional magnitude.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

2019

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Accumulating evidence suggests that different magnitudes (e.g., number, size, and duration) are spatialized in the mind according to a common left–right metric, consistent with a generalized system for representing magnitude. A previous study conducted by two of us (Holmes & Lourenco, ) provided evidence that this metric extends to the processing of emotional magnitude, or the intensity of emotion expressed in faces. Recently, however, Pitt and Casasanto () showed that the earlier effects may have been driven by a left–right mapping of mouth size rather than emotional magnitude, and they found no evidence for an emotional magnitude mapping when using words as stimuli. Here, we report two new experiments that further examine these conclusions. In Experiment 1, using face stimuli with mouths occluded, we replicate the original finding: Less emotional faces were associated with the left and more emotional faces with the right. However, we also find that people can reliably infer the sizes of the occluded mouths, and that these inferred mouth sizes can explain the observed left–right mapping. In Experiment 2, we show that comparative judgments of emotional words yield a left–right mapping of emotional magnitude not attributable to stimulus confounds. Based on these findings, we concur with Pitt and Casasanto that faces pose challenges for isolating the forces driving spatialization, but we suggest that emotional magnitude, when assessed using unconfounded stimuli in a sufficiently sensitive task, may indeed be spatialized as originally proposed. Suggestions for further research on the spatialization of emotional magnitude are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

2019

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“…Reaction time (RT) tasks have also shown lateral space‐valence congruity effects, and they are of particular relevance to this study. Across multiple experiments, right‐ and left‐handers were faster to classify centrally presented words as positive when responding with their dominant hand, and faster to classify words as negative when responding with their non‐dominant hand (Kong, ; Song, Chen, & Proctor, ; de la Vega, De Filippis, Lachmair, Dudschig, & Kaup, ; de la Vega, Dudschig, De Filippis, Lachmair, & Kaup, ). A similar pattern was found when people judged positive and negative emotional faces with the dominant and non‐dominant hands (Kong, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatializing Emotion: No Evidence for a Domain‐General Magnitude System

Pitt

Casasanto

2017

Cognitive Science

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People implicitly associate different emotions with different locations in left-right space. Which aspects of emotion do they spatialize, and why? Across many studies people spatialize emotional valence, mapping positive emotions onto their dominant side of space and negative emotions onto their non-dominant side, consistent with theories of metaphorical mental representation. Yet other results suggest a conflicting mapping of emotional intensity (a.k.a., emotional magnitude), according to which people associate more intense emotions with the right and less intense emotions with the left - regardless of their valence; this pattern has been interpreted as support for a domain-general system for representing magnitudes. To resolve the apparent contradiction between these mappings, we first tested whether people implicitly map either valence or intensity onto left-right space, depending on which dimension of emotion they attend to (Experiments 1a, b). When asked to judge emotional valence, participants showed the predicted valence mapping. However, when asked to judge emotional intensity, participants showed no systematic intensity mapping. We then tested an alternative explanation of findings previously interpreted as evidence for an intensity mapping (Experiments 2a, b). These results suggest that previous findings may reflect a left-right mapping of spatial magnitude (i.e., the size of a salient feature of the stimuli) rather than emotion. People implicitly spatialize emotional valence, but, at present, there is no clear evidence for an implicit lateral mapping of emotional intensity. These findings support metaphor theory and challenge the proposal that mental magnitudes are represented by a domain-general metric that extends to the domain of emotion.

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“…Furthermore, the stimuli's valence can affect spatial coding by impacting task-set selection or response selection, depending on the response mode (Yamaguchi, Chen, Mishler, & Proctor, 2017). Hand dominance has also been shown to automatically influence response selection to positive and negative words, regardless of spatial coding (Song, Chen, & Proctor, 2017). 3 Thus, the use of one's dominant or non-dominant hand when reacting within these experimental settings gives rise to different repercussions of stimulus-related and end staterelated effects on response (Stone & Gonzalez, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the stimuli’s valence can affect spatial coding by impacting task-set selection or response selection, depending on the response mode (Yamaguchi, Chen, Mishler, & Proctor, 2017). Hand dominance has also been shown to automatically influence response selection to positive and negative words, regardless of spatial coding (Song, Chen, & Proctor, 2017). 3…”

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confidence: 99%

Grasping a Chestnut Burr

Michalland

Thébault

Briglia

et al. 2019

Experimental Psychology

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Abstract. This work aimed to assess the role of manual laterality in action coding strategies and, subsequently, in environmental features relevant for each hand’s action. Relying on Eder and Hommel’s (2013) proposal, we distinguished stimulus-related and end state-related consequences in a Simon paradigm where right-handed participants were divided into two groups, one responding with gloves and one without. Two objects were presented pictorially: one for which sensory consequences of grasping were negatively valenced (a chestnut burr), and one for which they were positively valenced (an apricot). By these means, stimulus and end-state effects could be assessed separately, along with the relevance of each feature of the experimental settings. Results showed that the use of one’s dominant or non dominant hand gives rise to different repercussions of stimulus-related and end state-related effects on response: Responses made with the right (dominant) hand were based on an elaborated coding (representing features of stimulus-related and end state-related consequences of action). In contrast, responses made with the left (non dominant) hand seemed to be based on a less elaborated coding (not taking into account end-state consequences of an action).

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Role of hand dominance in mapping preferences for emotional-valence words to keypress responses

Cited by 13 publications

References 27 publications

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

Spatializing Emotion: No Evidence for a Domain‐General Magnitude System

Grasping a Chestnut Burr

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