Right-Hemisphere Advantage of Target Processing in Rapid Series of Stimuli: On the Roles of Attention, Emotion, and Temporal Order

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Christian Kaernbach; Professor Dr. Rolf Verleger (†)
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2008 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 60372088

When capacity of the perceptual system is burdened with processing of preceding target stimuli, chances for rapidly presented information to be consciously perceived are much better in the left than in the right half of the visual field. Aiming at understanding the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms of this asymmetry, we conclude from previous work in this project that this asymmetry neither reflects some perceptual or capacity advantage of the right hemisphere (which is concerned with the left visual field) nor is induced culturally by learned direction of reading. Rather, the hypothesis crystallized that the asymmetry presumably reflects an advantage of the right hemisphere in directing attention reactively to external relevant stimuli. In this project, positive evidence will be provided for this hypothesis: (1) by means of experimentally manipulating the directing of attention, and (2) neurophysiologically, by tackling the temporo-parietal junction as target zone of interfering magnetic stimulation, and by analyzing right-left asymmetries in spontaneous EEG and in distractor- and target-evoked EEG potentials. Furthermore, (3) it will be investigated whether the visual-field advantage extends from conscious identification to conscious and unconscious emotional responses, and (4) paradoxical effects of rapidly presented targets, seemingly directed backwards in time, will be further investigated and modeled.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants