All participants reported to be native English http://www.selleckchem.com/products/VX-765.html speaking, right-handed, which was confirmed by the Edinburgh Inventory ( Oldfield, 1971), and had no hearing deficits. Additional item measures were taken to screen for and exclude any individuals

that were currently suffering from, or reported any previous history of neurological conditions, psychiatric illnesses or impaired language ability. The sample was divided into high (n = 64) and low (n = 68) schizotypal personality groups by the median of the total Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) score (median = 17; range, 1–46; see Table 1). This approach allowed for the assessment of range-bound schizotypy effects and has previously been used elsewhere (e.g., Hori, Ozeki, Terada, & Kunugi, 2008; Langdon & Coltheart, 2004). No significant differences in demographic variables

were found between the two groups, indicating Ku-0059436 manufacturer equal dispersions of sex [X2 (1, N = 132) = 067, p > .05] and age [t(119) = 1.48, p > .05]. In addition, all participants were treated in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki ( International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 1991). The auditory stimuli used within the present dichotic listening task consisted of four words (‘dower’, ‘tower’, ‘power’, and ‘bower’), each pronounced in four different emotional tones (happy, sad, angry, and neutral), resulting in 16 separate word–emotion combinations. These were spoken by an adult male and recorded using a digital recorder. After the stimuli were obtained, they were edited to a common length of 560 ms and equalised in loudness. Originally four versions of each word–emotion combination were gathered,

totalling 64 recordings. After editing, these stimuli were presented to a group of 4 participants who were asked to report the word and emotional tone and to rate the intensity (on a scale of 1–5) with which it was spoken. From this, the final stimuli were constructed by selecting the 16 word–emotion sound files that were IKBKE most correctly identified. To ensure that these 16 recordings were perceived accurately, an additional ten participants were asked to report each word and emotional tone. The emotions were recognised with a minimum accuracy of 69% (M = 81.4) and words were identified with a minimum accuracy of 94% (M = 98.8). Following confirmation of the stimuli, all potential pairings of word–emotion combinations were created, generating 144 stimulus pairs in total. These stimuli were presented over headphones and the experiment was run on SuperLab software. This 10-item scale requires participants to specify their hand preference for 10 activities including writing, drawing, throwing, and striking a match. Participants are requested to indicate whether they predominantly use their right hand, left hand, or have no preference. These answers are scored +10, −10, and 0, respectively.