HEMISPHERE ASYMMETRY AND THE PROCESSING OF EMOTIONAL WORDS IN ANXIETY

High- and low-trait anxious subjects participated in a divided Visual field emotional Stroop task. Subjects identified the colour of unilaterally presented threat-related, positive and neutral words. The high- and low-trait groups differed in terms of their accuracy scores but not in their reaction times. Analysis of the accuracy data revealed that the high-trait group exhibited right hemisphere interference for emotional relative to neutral trials whereas the low-trait showed right hemisphere interference for threat-related trials only. The idea that the right hemisphere is differentially specialised for the processing of emotional information was supported.