Hemispheric asymmetries in the recognition of animal photographs in different views

The purpose of the present study was to determine the influence of atypical and prototypical views of real object representations on cognitive processing. Thirty normal subjects were submitted to right or left field tachistoscopic presentation of animal photographs in two experimental situations with different recognition tasks. In the first task, the animals were presented in the two different views and in the second, animals of different species were presented only in the prototypical view. A left visual field advantage was found in the recognition of atypical views and a right visual field advantage in the recognition of prototypical ones. The hemispheric processing for both recognition processes is discussed.