Absence of any developmental trend in right hemisphere superiority for face recognition

Upright or inverted pictures of faces were presented bilaterally, with one face falling in each visual hemifield, to right-handed children aged seven, ten and thirteen years. When a small set of four stimulus faces was used with each child (Experiment I) both boys and girls were found to be better at recognising upright faces falling in the left visual hemifield (LVF). For inverted faces there was no difference between the visual hemifields. When a set of forty stimulus faces was used (Experiment II), boys only were found to be better at recognising upright faces falling in the LVF. These results are interpreted in terms of superiority of the right cerebral hemisphere for processing upright faces. No developmental differences in the degree of this superiority were found in the age range studied.