Dichotically presented emotionally intoned words produce laterality differences as a function of localisation task

Abstract

Two-syllable words (burden; furrow; mantle; ration) each spoken in happy, angry, sad, and neutral tones of voice were dichotically paired. For each presented wordpair, subjects were asked to localise ("left"; "right") or reject the presence of one pre-specified word on one block of trials and one pre-specified emotional tone on a second trial block. Right ear advantages (REAs) indicated by a superior hit rate averaging 9.6% were found for all words. Left ear advantages (LEAs) averaging 15.2% were obtained for emotional intonation, with additional evidence of differences between emotion categories. Results are discussed in terms of complementary hemispheric roles for linguistic and prosodic analysis.