Processing of emotional kanji words in the right hemisphere and the effect of handedness on the processing

Abstract

Experimental and clinical evidence indicates that the right hemisphere plays a special role in the processing of non-verbal emotional material. The possibility that verbal material may also be similarly processed in the hemisphere was investigated with a reading aloud task, with unilateral tachistoscopic presentation of emotional and non-emotional kanji words. Right-handed subjects, both male and female, participated in Experiment 1 and right and left-handed subjects of both sexes in Experiment 2. Results of Experiment 1 showed that response to non-emotional kanji words were more accurate in the right visual field than in the left, but no difference was found for emotional words. Results of Experiment 2 showed the word-emotionality by visual-field interaction effect on accuracy of both right- and left-handed subjects, but the effect was more pronounced for the right-handed. The results suggest that the right hemisphere processes emotional kanji words just as well as the left.