Emotional words, free recall, and laterality

Abstract

Subjects learned lists of emotional and neutral words and were tested with either cued or free recall. Between learning and recall, subjects were required to listen to emotional or nonemotional auditory stimuli. Results demonstrated that cued recall was superior to free recall, memory for emotional words was superior to that for neutral words, and the emotionality of the interpolated material had no effect. These results were analyzed and discussed in terms of the subjects’ degree of laterality in an attempt to explicate the role of the two hemispheres in processing emotional material.