Date of Award

1983

Degree Name

M.A. in Psychology

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to investigate time based hemispheric processing in a recognition task. In Exp. 1, 32 right handed subjects were tachistoscopially presented upright and inverted faces in the left or right visual field followed by either a gray or letter mask. In Exp. 2, 32 right handed subjects were tachistoacopically presented whole and half faces in the left or right visual field followed by either a gray or letter mask. Both experiments obtained a significant stimulus type by type of mask interaction. For Exp. 1, the mean number of correct responses for upright stimuli was greater following the gray mask than following the letter mask, whereas for inverted stimuli there is almost no difference between masks. For Exp. 2, the mean number of correct responses for whole faces was greater following the gray mask than following the letter mask, whereas for half face stimuli there was almost no difference between masks. No significant visual field differences were obtained in either experiment. It is concluded that whole upright faces are better recognized by configurational processes which take time to develop. When this time is disrupted by the use of a letter mask, as compared with a gray mask, performance decreases. In contrast, inverted or half faces are better recognized by piecemeal feature detection which does not require as much time a1 configurational processing. There is no difference in performance when processing time is disrupted by the letter or gray mask.

Keywords

Face perception, Recognition (Psychology), Cerebral dominance, Cerebral hemispheres

Rights Statement

Copyright © 1983, author

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