On the nature of the left visual field advantage for faces.

An experiment is reported in which subjects were required to make a same-different judgment about two sequentially presented stimuli, the first of which was centrally presented and the second displaced either to the left or right of fixation. Three categories of stimuli were used; photographs of hands, faces, and silhouettes of unfamiliar aeroplanes. The results showed a left visual field advantage for both hands and faces but no hemifield effect for aeroplane silhouettes. Implications of these data for future research are briefly considered.