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Updated: Jun 12, 2026
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Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention
Published on: November 16, 2017
Examining the effects of inversion on lateralisation for processing facial emotion
1School of Psychology, University of Dundee, UK. v.bourne@dundee.ac.uk
Summary
The brain
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Facial Emotion Recognition
Background:
- Hemispheric specialization suggests the right hemisphere processes configural facial information, while the left processes featural information.
- This distinction is evident in face recognition but not consistently demonstrated for facial emotion processing.
- Facial emotion lateralization remains an area requiring further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate hemispheric specialization for processing six basic facial emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise).
- To examine the influence of face orientation (upright vs. inverted) on facial emotion processing lateralization.
- To test the hypothesis of differential hemispheric specialization for facial emotion stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the chimeric faces test with stimuli expressing six basic emotions.
- Presented chimeric faces in both upright and inverted orientations.
- Analyzed for hemispheric biases in processing emotional facial information.
Main Results:
- A right hemisphere bias was observed for processing all six emotions when faces were upright.
- Inverted faces showed a left hemisphere bias for happiness and surprise processing.
- Negative emotions (anger, disgust, fear) did not show a significant left hemisphere bias when inverted, though anger approached significance.
Conclusions:
- Findings support differential hemispheric specialization for processing facial emotions.
- Results indicate that face orientation critically influences lateralization patterns for emotion recognition.
- The study contradicts previous work on the effects of inversion on chimeric face stimuli, highlighting the complexity of facial emotion processing.
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