Lance Workman

Development of cerebral lateralisation for recognition of emotions in chimeric faces in children aged 5 to 11

In contrast to research into the development of language laterality, there has been relatively little research into the development of lateralisation of emotional processing. If language lateralisation begins in childhood and is complete by puberty (Lenneberg, 1967) it seems reasonable that the lateralisation of the perception of emotions might also occur during this period. In this study a split field chimeric faces test using the six universal facial expressions proposed by Ekman and Friesen (1971), an emotion in the eyes test, and a situational cartoon test were administered to three groups of children aged 5/6, 7/8, and 10/11. No overall hemispace advantage was seen for the 5/6-year-old group, but by the age of 10/11 a clear left hemispace advantage (right hemisphere) was found for all six emotions. Such a pattern is comparable to a previous study that made use of adults on this task (Workman, Peters, & Taylor, 2000b). Moreover, a significant positive correlation between a childs ability to recognise emotions in cartoon situations and their left hemispatial advantage score was uncovered. Finally, a significant positive correlation between a childs ability to recognise emotions in the eyes of others and their left hemispatial advantage score was also uncovered. These findings are taken as evidence that there may be a relationship between the development of emotional processing in the right hemisphere and a childs emerging ability to perceive or attend to the emotional states of others. Results are discussed in relation to the childs development of a theory of mind.

Emotion lateralisation: Developments throughout the lifespan

There is a great amount of research on hemispheric lateralisation for processing emotions and on the recognition of emotions across the lifespan. However, few researchers have explored the links between these two measures. This paper highlights how trends in these two research areas inform our understanding of how lateralisation for emotion processing may influence emotion recognition performance throughout the lifespan, including if the development of emotion lateralisation is a response to our environmental experiences of learning (experience dependent) or a result of having specific experiences at a particular time (experience expectant). The development of emotion lateralisation across the lifespan (infancy through to late adulthood) is explored with reference to past research and through the integration of the novel research offered within this special issue of Laterality. We also explore what we can learn from atypical populations. We propose that researchers need to focus on three key avenues of future research (longitudinal research, investigating the role of hormones, and research that explores the evolution of laterality) all which will provide greater insight into the development of laterality and how this may be associated with emotion processing.

Visual laterality effects in readers of a deep and a shallow orthography

Using a tachistoscopic split-field paradigm, hemifield asymmetry for single word recognition was examined in monolingual English speakers and in fluent bilingual English–Welsh speakers. A robust right hemifield advantage was found for both groups and both languages. Among bilinguals, the laterality index was significantly greater for Welsh than for English, supporting previous findings. The magnitude of the laterality index was unaffected by which language was learned first (Welsh or English) and by the age of acquisition (before or after 5–6years old) of the second language. However, among bilinguals there was a significant difference in the laterality index for Welsh words compared with English words for those participants brought up in a predominantly Welsh-speaking environment, but not for those brought up in a predominantly English-speaking or dual-language environment. We attribute our results to the difference in orthographic depth between Welsh and English. and argue that the transparency of Welsh favours adoption of a left-hemisphere based phonological decoding strategy in reading. Such a strategy is not necessarily used exclusively by readers of Welsh, but is encouraged by regular exposure to the Welsh language on a day-to-day basis.

Abnormal patterns of cerebral lateralisation as revealed by the universal chimeric faces task in individuals with autistic disorder

A previous study by Workman, Chilvers, Yeomans, and Taylor (2006), using the “Universal” Chimeric Faces Task (UCFT) for six emotional expressions, demonstrated that an overall left hemispatial/right hemisphere (RH) advantage has begun to develop by the age of 7–8. Moreover, the development of this left hemispatial advantage was observed to correlate positively with the ability to read emotions in the faces of others. Adopting the UCFT, the current study compared autistic children (11–15) with unimpaired children of two age groups (5–6 and 7–8) from this previous study. The autistic children showed a left hemispatial/RH advantage only for the two emotional expressions of “happiness” and “anger”. Results for the autistic children revealed a similar overall pattern of lateralisation to the 5–6-year-olds and one that is less lateralised than the pattern for the 7–8-year-olds. Autistic children appear to show a developmental deficit for left hemispatial/RH advantage for emotional expression with the exception of “happiness” and “anger.” The findings are discussed in terms of role hemisphericity and an approach-avoidance model.

Self-Perception of Intelligence in Male and Female Undergraduates in Old and New Welsh Universities

In 1991 John Majors UK government announced that the binary divide in UK higher education was to be phased out as polytechnics would be given permission by the Privy Council to apply for university status. But has the binary divide really ceased to exist in higher education? Given that the ‘old’ universities typically ask for higher A-level grades than the ‘new’ ones we might ask: do students at new universities perceive themselves as being less able than those at old universities? In addition to the possibility of differences between institutions we might also ask do the sexes differ in their self-perceptions of intelligence? Over the last 25 years, a number of studies have demonstrated a robust gender difference in self-estimation of intelligence, with female undergraduates consistently producing lower ratings of their own intelligence than their male counterparts (see for example Hogan, 1978; Higgins, 1987 and Furnham, 2000, 2001). Does this situation still prevail in todays universities where more women than men now enter higher education? Finally, given the rapid rise in the proportion of the population entering higher education during the 1990s we might ask whether this rise has had an effect on the self-perception of intelligence in students. The current study was designed to throw some light on all three of these questions by simply asking undergraduate samples at an old and a new Welsh university what score they think they would achieve on an IQ test. The findings suggest that female undergraduates still rate themselves less highly than males, that students attending new universities perceive themselves as being less intelligent than those studying at old universities and finally, that during the 1990s there was a general fall in self-estimates of IQ amongst university students.

Population lateralization in zebra finch courtship : an unresolved issue

We reported (Workman & Andrew 1986) that individual male zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, had a preferred orientation during their lateral courtship approach along a narrow perch to their mate, and that the population as a whole had a significant tendency to approach with the right flank towards the female. We noted as a result, the female was usually fixated with the right eye, and suggested that differing specialization of the hemispheres for the control of visually evoked behaviour might underlie the choice of orientation. Recently, ten Cate et al. (1990) measured the orientation of male zebra finches as they moved within a ring-shaped corridor, surrounded on both sides by cages. Females were visible within the cages lying along either the inner or the outer edge of the corridor, ten Cate et al. predicted that, if males were orienting so as to view females with a particular eye, they would choose to traverse the corridor in one direction when the outer cages were occupied but in the other direction when the inner cages held the females. In the event, when the orientation of males was measured as they passed the perch on which the female sat, there was no significant tendency to present right or left flank more commonly at either individual or population levels. The same was true when comparing the number of tests in which either the left or the right flank was most frequently oriented towards the stimulus female. We believe that the conditions under which the two sets of data were gathered are so different that there is little to be deduced from the apparent discrepancy between them. We observed only pairbonded males which were in a courtship approach to their own females; copulation at the end of the approach was entirely possible and sometimes occurred. A lateral position was present in all cases when the male was courting. In contrast the males in the experiments reported by ten Cate et al. were responding to females that they had only encountered briefly before on a few occasions. They courted sometimes but could not reach the female. At other times they presumably examined the female and their surroundings; in our experience very carefully chosen conditions are necessary to be sure that a bird is concentrating its visual attention on a particular object, and it seems likely that in a substantial (but unknown) proportion of the observations even this requirement may not have been met. Thus our finding remains to be tested. A quite different issue is raised by a second finding of ten Cate et al., namely that direction of locomotion showed consistent bias at the individual level with a number of individuals showing a clockwise bias (an observation that fits in well with our own). It is not quite clear how this individual bias was measured. However, since data are presented for the females inside the cage as well as for the males in the corridor, it is likely to be comparable with the rotational preferences of rats which are known to be linked with asymmetries in the nigrostriatal function (e.g. Glick & Cox 1978). These impose a standing bias on locomotion and paw use. We agree with ten Cate et al. that there is no obvious way in which such a bias at the individual level, which varies randomly between individuals, could be translated into a consistent preference for right side presentation at the population level. Equally we accept (as we did in our original communication) that if our population of zebra finches had a motor bias that was consistent across individuals (unlike the population studied by ten Care et al.), this would provide one explanation for our findings. Our main aim here is to point out that these findings are not contradicted by ten Cate et al.; an explanation by motor bias is no more likely than before. We hope that interest in the lateral

The effects of temperature priming on cooperation in the iterated prisoner's dilemma.

Based on initial research findings by Williams and Bargh (2008) and Kang, Williams, Clark, Gray and Bargh (2011) on the interaction between interpersonal and physical warmth, theoretical models such as cognitive scaffolding and the importance of evaluations of interpersonal warmth in trust-based decisions, this experiment investigated the effect of temperature priming on 30 pairs of British university students with hot and cold objects on frequency of cooperation in a game of iterated Prisoners Dilemma. Participants were found to cooperate significantly more frequently when primed with hot objects than with cold objects, supporting the assertion that physical warmth sensation positively affects interpersonal trust evaluation. No support was found for the prediction that male-male pairs would cooperate less than female-female pairs. The implications of these findings to evolutionary and developmental theories of interpersonal warmth are discussed.

Adopting the Bottom-up Approach and Cluster Analysis on North American and European Male Serial Killers: A Follow-up Study

This study explores the application of the FBI’s organiseddisorganised classification to North-American and European male serial killers. Adopting the same method as Taylor, Lambeth, Green, Bone and Cahillane’s 2012 study, 52 crime scene criteria were used to categorise the murders committed by 25 male European and 25 male North-American serial killers. Applying content analysis, murders committed were dichotomously coded for the presence or absence of crime scene criteria using numerous secondary sources. Two separate agglomerative hierarchical cluster analyses using Ward’s method as the clustering algorithm formed two clusters for the North-American and two for the European serial killers. There were differences in the crime scene criteria for clusters between North-American and European serial murders. The ‘bottom-up’ approach resulted in clusters from the crime scene criteria demonstrating that there are problems associated with classifying traits as simply organised and disorganised. All clusters comprised of a degree of core organised traits -consistent with Canter, Alison, Alison and Wentink’s (2004) assumption that all serial killings require a degree of organisation. Further examination of frequency of occurrence measures suggests there are subtle but inherent differences between the MO of North American and European