Effect of verbal interference and response hand on hemisphere asymmetries in sad facial expression processing

A growing amount of evidence highlights a role for the left hemisphere in negative facial expression processing. The present study investigated the extent to which language contributes to this left hemisphere involvement by comparing performance during an emotion detection task presented to the left and right hemispheres using divided visual field under conditions of verbal interference (covertly rehearsing a 6-digit string for a subsequent memory) and no interference. Participants were college undergraduates with no known neurological or psychiatric conditions. Half used their right hand to respond and half used their left. In line with the hypothesis that language contributes to left hemisphere involvement in negative expression processing, participants who used their right hand to respond were more accurate with sad facial expressions when they were presented to the left hemisphere than the right during the no interference condition, but this left-hemisphere advantage disappeared dur..., , # Effect of verbal interference and response hand on hemisphere asymmetries in sad facial expression processing

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.r2280gbpw](10.5061/dryad.r2280gbpw)

## Description of the data and file structure

We provide the hit/false alarm rate, d-prime score, and response time (ms) for each participant in each expression-by-visual-field condition.

### Files and variables

#### Description of the data and file structure

A label describing the data contained in each column is provided in row 1 of the .csv file.

**Column Descriptions:**

* participant: Unique identifier assigned to each individual participant
* gender: Participant’s gender identity
* interference: Indicates whether the participant was in the verbal interference condition (verbal) or not (none)
* response_hand: Hand used by the participant to respond (right or left)

**Abbreviations used in variable names:**

**Facial expressions**

* an = angry
* di = disgusted
* fe = fearful
* ha = happy
* sa = sad
* s...,