Abstract
This study aimed to investigate how the brain hemispheres use spatial frequencies (SF) information at early stages of visual processing for facial recognition. Thirty participants performed a matching task in which a target face was presented centered on the screen and followed by a probe face in each trial. The probe face was presented lateralized under 3 SF conditions (high, low and broad spatial frequencies) and 2 exposure time conditions (70 and 150 ms). The participants had to judge whether both faces in each trial were from the same person. The results of d' suggest that the right hemisphere is specialized for low SF processing in high temporal constraint, but the left hemisphere is not for high SF. However, high-pass faces were better processed by the left hemisphere. The response time in short time conditions showed that facial recognition is better in the right hemisphere. High-pass faces are slowly processed by the left hemisphere, but with longer exposure time it becomes equivalent to the recognition of low-pass and broadband faces. We conclude that there is a right hemisphere dominance for low SF in brief exposures, but as time progresses high SF are better processed and asymmetry effects are attenuated. Keywords: Spatial frequencies; Coarse-to-fine processing, Brain asymmetry; Face perception.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015