Hemispheric consequences of success-related emotional states: roles of arousal and attention.
Three experiments employed a video game technique to investigate the influence of success-related emotional states on the detection of lateralized visual targets. Emotion was manipulated by means of success and failure feedback, while central and peripheral pretarget cues were used to assess arousal and attentional processes. Under neutral conditions involving no feedback, subjects showed a right visual field (RVF) advantage along with a phasic alerting effect (i.e., reaction times were faster to targets following cues at intermediate stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs]. When emotional value was added to the task, the RVF advantage increased following failure and decreased following success feedback. This effect peaked at intermediate SOAs, corresponding with the buildup of phasic arousal initiated by the cues. It was not influenced by the location of the pretarget cues, suggesting that attentional processes are not directly involved. These results are discussed in terms of recent models of hemispheric functioning during positive and negative emotional states.
Derryberry
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Department of Psychology, Oregon State University, Corvallis 97331.
D000124:Achievement; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time