Relationships Between Functional Asymmetry of the Hemispheres, Subliminal Perception and Some Defence Mechanisms in Various Experimental Settings

The role of two hemispheres in processing of emotional stimuli was studied comparing the data of two experiments and questionaries (1.experiment on subliminal perception, 2. Bakan's face-to-face situation, 3. defence mechanism questionaries), with the same subjects.Several indices obtained in the experimental situations (lateral eye movement, verbal RT, GSR, EEG) showed unanimously that the right hemisphere was in general superior in the preprocessing of emotionally loaded stimuli.The extent of this superiority, however, depends on different degrees of hemisphericity.This makes possible the formation of different defence mechanisms on the basis of learning.On the basis of the results a tentative interpretation of the phenomena of subception and defence mechanisms is given.Research on cerebral asymmetries has had a productive effect on the approach of such problematic-and since their discovery widely disputed-phenomena as subception or perceptual discrimination without awareness.Thus, in addition to diverse indirect evidence (Henley & Dixon, 1974) recent experimental research (Sackeim, Packer, & Gur, 1977;Bark6czi, Sera, & Kom16si, 1977, 1980a, b; Bark6czi, Komlosi, & Sera, 1980) has also provided direct evidence supporting the suggestions of the right hemisphere's ability to subcept, especially with respect to emotionally loaded stimuli.Concepts assuming a relationship between subception and the function of the hemispheres were based on the results of research concerning the characteristic processing styles of the hemispheres observed in studies with split-brain patients on the one hand (Sperry, Gazzaniga, & Bogen, 1969;Bogen, 1969;Gazzaniga, 1970; Nebes, 1974) and in those with intact persons on the other (Kimura, 1973;Cohen, 1973;Bever, 1975) and also concerning individual characteristics based on these differences (Bakan, 1969(Bakan, , 1971)).To summarize briefly these results the following picture can be drawn.The major part of the population-that is, the right handed people-can be characterized as having a verbal, analytic, sequential and logical way of processing in the left hemisphere while a visual, spatial, synthetic and holistic way of processing prevails in the right hemisphere.Of special importance for our topic are the results obtained in experiments on split-brain subjects in which two different short words were projected by tachistoscope onto the left and the right visual fields.The subjects * The device was designed by K. Halmai at the Department of General Psychol. of Eotvos L6rfmd Univ.* We are thankful to our colleagues, G. Kakas for her help in completing the experiments and A.Vargha