Biomaterial Database

Configural coding, expertise, and the right hemisphere advantage for face recognition. 1993

G Rhodes

Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Expertise in recognizing faces is associated with configural coding and configural coding is associated with a right hemisphere advantage for face recognition. Therefore one would expect the orientation-specific LVF (left visual field) advantage for face recognition to be moderated by expertise. The present experiments examined the effect of expertise with face ethnicity on the LVF advantage. In Experiment 1 subjects showed expertise-related use of configural coding, but no orientation-specific LVF advantage. In Experiment 2 subjects with high hemispheric arousal asymmetry showed an orientation-specific LVF advantage, but no expertise-related use of configural coding. Low arousal asymmetry subjects showed the opposite pattern. These results suggest that different kinds of configural coding may underlie ethnicity-related expertise effects and laterality effects in face recognition.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D008297	Male		Males
D009949	Orientation	Awareness of oneself in relation to time, place and person.	Cognitive Orientation,Mental Orientation,Psychological Orientation,Cognitive Orientations,Mental Orientations,Orientation, Cognitive,Orientation, Mental,Orientation, Psychological,Orientations,Orientations, Cognitive,Orientations, Mental,Orientations, Psychological,Psychological Orientations
D010364	Pattern Recognition, Visual	Mental process to visually perceive a critical number of facts (the pattern), such as characters, shapes, displays, or designs.	Recognition, Visual Pattern,Visual Pattern Recognition
D011340	Problem Solving	A learning situation involving more than one alternative from which a selection is made in order to attain a specific goal.
D011939	Mental Recall	The process whereby a representation of past experience is elicited.	Recall, Mental
D004193	Discrimination Learning	Learning that is manifested in the ability to respond differentially to various stimuli.	Discriminative Learning,Discrimination Learnings,Discriminative Learnings,Learning, Discrimination,Learning, Discriminative
D004292	Dominance, Cerebral	Dominance of one cerebral hemisphere over the other in cerebral functions.	Cerebral Dominance,Hemispheric Specialization,Dominances, Cerebral,Specialization, Hemispheric
D005145	Face	The anterior portion of the head that includes the skin, muscles, and structures of the forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and jaw.	Faces
D005260	Female		Females
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man