The effect of right hemispheric activation on processing of emotional tone in swearing

Undergraduate students were asked to engage in a spatial task (tetris) while recordings of a sentence involving swearing was played in the next room so that they could be heard by the participant. The participants’ ability to indicate the tone of the sentences was then recorded. The sentences were either angry, happy, or neutral. The participants were 14 males and 19 females. A univariate ANOVA found that there was not a significant effect between the ability to detect emotional tone in a sentence involving profanity and the involvement in a spatial task.