Absence of exposure time influence on lateralized face recognition and object naming latency tasks

J. Sergent (1982, Perception & Psychophysics, 31, 451-461; 1983, Psychological Bulletin, 93, 481-512) postulates that the left cerebral hemisphere preferentially extracts higher spatial frequency information, while the right hemisphere preferentially extracts lower frequency spatial information, from the visual scene. According to this view, shorter exposure times favor better right than left hemisphere performance, while longer exposure times favor better left than right hemisphere performance on tachistoscopic laterality tasks. We studied the effects of a threefold variation (40 msec versus 120 msec) in exposure duration, with constant 3-mL luminance, on face recognition and on object naming latency task performances. These are the same stimulus parameters employed by J. Sergent (1983, Psychological Bulletin, 93, 481-512) to demonstrate exposure duration effects in a task requiring the judgment of the sex of models from face photographs. We found the expected LVF superiority on the face recognition task and RVF superiority on the object naming task. There was, however, no influence of exposure duration on the performances. It is concluded that these tasks, which tap established lateralized processing asymmetries, are quite robust in their resistance to exposure time influence.