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Right-lateralized unconscious, but not conscious, processing of affective environmental sounds

Schepman, Astrid
; 
Rodway, Paul
; 
Pritchard, Hayley
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Affiliation
University of Chester
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Publication Date
2015-10-29
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Psychology
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Abstract
Much research on the laterality of affective auditory stimuli features emotional speech. However, environmental sounds can also carry affective information, but their lateralized processing for affect has been studied much less. We studied this in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1 we explored whether the detection of affective environmental sounds (from International Affective Digital Sounds) that appeared in auditory scenes was lateralized. While we found that negative targets were detected more rapidly, detection latencies were the same on the left and right. In Experiment 2 we examined whether conscious appraisal of the stimulus was needed for lateralization patterns to emerge, and asked participants to rate the stimuli's pleasantness in a dichotic listening test. This showed that when positive/negative environmental sounds were in the attended to-be-rated channel, ratings were the same regardless of laterality. However, when participants rated neutral stimuli and the unattended channel was positive/negative, the valence of the unattended channel affected the neutral ratings more strongly with left ear (right hemisphere, RH) processing of the affective sound. We link our findings to previous work that suggests that the RH may specialize in the unconscious processing of emotion via subcortical routes.
Citation
Schepman, A., Rodway, P., & Pritchard, H. (2016). Right-lateralized unconscious, but not conscious, processing of affective environmental sounds. Laterality, 21(4-6), 606-632. doi:10.1080/1357650X.2015.1105245
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Journal
Laterality
Research Unit
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/581799
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PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
Language
en
Description
Journal article - this version is early online. Print version to follow.
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ISSN
1464-0678
1357-650X
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University of Chester internal grant
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2015.1105245