Laterality biases to chimeric faces in Asperger syndrome: what is 'right' about face-processing?
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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Chris Ashwin1, Sally Wheelwright, Simon Baron-Cohen
1Department of Psychology and Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. ca235@cam.ac.uk
Abstract:
People show a left visual field (LVF) bias for faces, i.e., involving the right hemisphere of the brain. Lesion and neuroimaging studies confirm the importance of the right-hemisphere and suggest separable neural pathways for processing facial identity vs. emotions. We investigated the hemispheric processing of faces in adults with and without Asperger syndrome (AS) using facial emotion and identity chimeric tasks. Controls showed an LVF bias in both tasks, but no perceptual bias in a non-social control task. The AS group showed an LVF bias during both tasks, however the bias was reduced in the identity condition. Further, the AS group showed an LVF bias in the non-social condition. These results show a differential pattern of hemispheric processing of faces in AS.
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