Unilateral and Bilateral Brain Hemispheric Advantage on Visual Matching Tasks and Their Relationship to Styles of Religiosity

Abstract

Eighty-five undergraduate students were tested in two studies using a computer-based tachistoscopic-type letter- and dot-matching task under various conditions. This task was used to determine the extent to which they displayed unilateral and bilateral brain-hemisphere advantages in the speed and accuracy of their responses. For the letter-matching task in both studies, the intellectual religiosity group displayed a stronger unilateral advantage favoring the right-visual field (RVF) (left brain) than the affective group. Generally, the participants with a more affective style of religiosity had faster reaction times on the matching tasks, especially for correct non-matching responses and on the dot-matching (right-brain) stimulus presentations. The affective groups also tended to have a stronger bilateral advantage for both dots and letter matching compared to the intellectual group. In the second study, the Myers-Briggs personality typology inventory (MBTI) was included in the assessment and was significantly related to the religiosity intellectual/affective dimension. With percent errors as the dependent variable, MBTI feeling-dominant participants displayed a stronger bilateral advantage for dots presentations but not letters, while thinking-dominant respondents on this dimension had a stronger unilateral advantage for letters but not dots. The major implication of these preliminary findings is that enduring religious traits may be anchored in basic brain behavior tendencies that can be measured using neuropsychological laboratory-based tasks.