Premium
Hemispheric asymmetry and electrodermal activity in orienting and pavlovian conditioning paradigms
Author(s) -
HUGDAHL K.,
EEROLA V.,
KORVENTAUSTA L.,
PALM T.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1982.tb00469.x
Subject(s) - psychology , habituation , orienting response , classical conditioning , lateralization of brain function , stimulus (psychology) , laterality , conditioning , extinction (optical mineralogy) , dichotic listening , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , audiology , medicine , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , biology
Three experiments on lateralization of electrodermal orienting and conditioned behavior are reported. The basic findings show effects of hemispheric asymmetry on initial magnitude and rate of habituation of phasic stimulus‐elicited electrodermal responses. In summary, responses to verbal stimuli repeatedly flashed to the right visual half‐field are larger than corresponding responses in the left half‐field. Similarily, spatially relevant stimuli initially presented to the left half‐field result in larger responses than when the same stimuli are repeatedly presented in the right half‐field. In the auditory modality, data show asymmetrical control of responding to verbal material in a dichotic conditioning paradigm with greater resistance to extinction when the conditioned stimulus is initially fed only to the left hemisphere as compared to when it is fed only to the right hemisphere. It is argued that the present approach taps on basic mechanisms for the lateralization of attentional and associative functions.