The Relationship Among Emotional Valence, Time And Left-Right Space

Along with our lives, emotions, time, and space are the major part in the mental activities. Exploring the relationship among space, emotion and time has gradually become the focus for the researchers. In reading and writing habits run from left to right groups, studies between spatial position with emotional valence and time have reached a common result, which associations left with negative and past, while association right with positive and future. However, most of relative researches were conducted when participants fully aware of the information about test stimulus. If the participants were not fully processed the information of stimulus, whether the association will automatically activate? It is the one problem in our study.Numerous studies suggested that affective reactions precede cognition, emotional information was easier access cognitive resources than others, it was known as affect primacy. There are many phrases which combine emotional valence and time in everyday language, such as glorious history, happy tomorrow, and wonderful childhood. What is the relationship of them with spatial position? Whether the affect primacy still existence? There are few studies explore this phenomenon. It is the other problem in our study.The purpose of our research was to assess whether the corresponding relationships between spatial position and emotional valence or time are influenced by the degree of processing of the information, and to explore the relationship between interaction of emotional valence and time and spatial position. In experiment1α, right-handers made a lexical judgment by pressing a left or right key. Attention was not explicitly drawn to the valence of the stimuli. No valence-by-side interaction emerged. In experiment lb, right-handers made a valence judgment by pressing a left or right key. A valence-by-side interaction emerged:For positive words, responses were faster when participants responded with their dominant hand, whereas for negative words, responses were faster for the non-dominant hand. In experiment2a, right-handers made a lexical judgment by pressing a left or right key. Attention was not explicitly drawn to the time of the stimuli. No time-by-side interaction emerged. In experiment2b, right-handers made a time judgment by pressing a left or right key. A time-by-side interaction emerged: participants were faster responding to future words with the right hand and to past words with the left hand. In experiment3a, required a lexical judgment with interaction phrases, no interaction emerged. In experiment3b, required a interaction judgment with stating an explicit mapping of interaction and side, a valence-by-side emerged: right-handers were faster responding to positive-by-future and positive-by-past phrases with the right hand, while faster responding to negative-by-future and negative-by-past phrases with the left hand.The experiment provide evidence for associations between response side and valence, as well as side and time, which does not seem to be activated automatically but rather requires a task with an explicit response mapping to occur. When conflict of valence-by-side and time-by-side occurred, affect primacy would happen, that is to say, responding to emotional information was faster than temporal stimuli.