Does the upper visual field advantage in face-processing relate to participant bias in attentional allocation?
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1
Macquarie University, Cognitive Science, Australia
It has recently been established that face-processing is more robust in the upper visual field (UVF) than the lower visual field (LVF). Here we investigate whether this UVF advantage results from a potential participant bias to direct attention towards the upper hemifield. Participants made reaching movements to classify the sex of a target face which appeared either immediately above or below central fixation. The target was preceded by a nonconscious prime face which was either congruent or incongruent with the target (i.e. same or opposite sex). We used the masked congruence effect (MCE), or the extent to which the prime modulated the response to the subsequent target, as our dependent measure. The critical manipulation was the proportion of prime-target pairs which appeared in each vertical hemifield. In the first block of trials, the faces appeared with equal probability in both hemifields. Here we expected to replicate past results by observing a UVF advantage reflected in the timecourse of the MCE. In the second block of trials, the faces appeared below fixation 80% of the time. If the UVF advantage for faces results from an endogenous attentional bias the favours the upper hemifield, then the 80:20 ratio of LVF to UVF targets in the second block should shift participants’ expectations of where the face will appear, eliminating or even inverting the UVF advantage. Results and implications are discussed.
Keywords:
sex categorization,
masked priming,
Attention,
reaching,
vertical asymmetry
Conference:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, 28 Nov - 1 Dec, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Attention
Citation:
Quek
GL and
Finkbeiner
M
(2013). Does the upper visual field advantage in face-processing relate to participant bias in attentional allocation?.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00044
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Received:
15 Oct 2013;
Published Online:
25 Nov 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Genevieve L Quek, Macquarie University, Cognitive Science, North Ryde, New South Wales, 2109, Australia, genevieve.lauren.quek@gmail.com