Configurational coding, familiarity and the right hemisphere advantage for face recognition in sheep

This study examined characteristics of visual recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces in sheep using a 2-way discrimination task. Of particular interest were effects of lateralisation and the differential use of internal (configurational) vs external features of the stimuli. Animals were trained in a Y-maze to identify target faces from pairs, both of which were familiar (same flock as the subjects) or both of which were unfamiliar (different flock). Having been trained to identify the rewarded face a series of stimuli were presented to the sheep, designed to test for the use of each visual hemifield in the discriminations and the use of internal and external facial cues. The first experiment showed that there was a left visual hemifield (LVF) advantage in the identification of 'hemifaces', and 'mirrored hemifaces' and 'chimeric' faces and that this effect was strongest with familiar faces. This represents the first evidence for visual field bias outside the primate literature. Results from the second experiment showed that, whilst both familiar and unfamiliar faces could be identified by the external features alone, only the familiar faces could be recognised by the internal features alone. Overall the results suggest separate recognition methods for socially familiar and unfamiliar faces, with the former being coded more by internal, configurational cues and showing a lateral bias to the left visual field.