Relationship between changes in hemispheric advantage during familiarization to faces and proficiency in facial recognition

Female college students were given a task involving the recognition of initially unfamiliar faces which were tachistoscopically presented to one or the other visual field. Subjects who showed a left visual field advantage made fewer errors than those who showed a right visual field advantage both at the very beginning of the task, when the faces were totally unfamiliar, and at the end of the task, when the faces were relatively familiar; however, during intermediate phases of familiarization, there was no difference in number of errors between subjects with right and left visual field advantages. The results support our previously proposed view that there are shifts in the processing of facial information, beginning with a relatively undifferentiated holistic type of right hemisphere processing, progressing to an analytic mode of left hemisphere processing and culminating in a mode of right hemisphere processing in which distinctive features are incorporated into an articulated whole. The results further suggest that the direction of hemispheric advantage shown at different periods in the course of familiarization is related to level of proficiency.