Examining the effects of inversion on lateralisation for processing facial emotion

Abstract

There is an increasing amount of evidence which suggests that each hemisphere is differently specialised for processing facial stimuli, with the right hemisphere specialised for the processing of configural information and the left hemisphere specialised for the processing of featural information. While there is evidence for this distinction from studies of face recognition, it has not been shown in studies of lateralisation for processing facial emotion. In this study the chimeric faces test was used with faces expressing anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness or surprise, presented in either an upright or an inverted orientation. When presented upright, a significant right hemisphere bias was found for all six emotions. However, when inverted, a significant left hemisphere bias was found for the processing of happiness and surprise, but not for the processing of negative emotions (although the analysis was approaching significance for anger). These findings support the hypothesis that each hemisphere is differently specialised for processing facial emotion, but contradicts previous work that examined the effects of inversion on chimeric face stimuli.