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Examining the role of red background in magnocellular contribution to face perception
Bhuvanesh Awasthi1, Mark A Williams2, Jason Friedman3
1Centre for Cognition and Decision Making, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Abstract:
This study examines the role of the magnocellular system in the early stages of face perception, in particular sex categorization. Utilizing the specific property of magnocellular suppression in red light, we investigated visually guided reaching to low and high spatial frequency hybrid faces against red and grey backgrounds. The arm movement curvature measure shows that reduced response of the magnocellular pathway interferes with the low spatial frequency component of face perception. This finding provides behavioral evidence for magnocellular contribution to non-emotional aspect of face perception.
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