Eye-catching: right hemisphere attentional bias for emotional pictures

Abstract

To examine whether healthy individuals spontaneously direct attention to emotional pictures, eye movements were monitored continuously during the presentation of pairs of emotional and neutral pictures. A right hemisphere advantage was expected for initial orienting to emotional pictures. When an emotionally arousing picture was presented in the left visual hemifield, i.e., to the right hemisphere, the initial saccade was more often issued towards it, irrespective of valence. Negative pictures did not lead to avoidance throughout the 8-second trials; rather, both positive and negative valence held attention. This study adds to the evidence that overt attention to visual stimuli is boosted by emotion and that there is a right hemisphere advantage for orienting to emotional cues.