The independence of face identity and facial expression recognition mechanisms: relationship to sex and cognitive style.
Two tasks, one mapping the recognition of unfamiliar face identity and the other the identification of six facial expressions were unilaterally presented to field dependent and field independent individuals of both genders. Regardless of sex, field independent subjects showed faster-response times (RTs) in the left visual field (LVF) for face identity and for the identification of disgust and fear and faster RTs in the RVF for the identification of anger. A trend toward LVF superiority was found over the whole sample for the facial expression task; this effect was still present when the face identity task was partialled out, indicating the independence of the underlying mechanisms.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D005556:Form Perception; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012727:Sex Characteristics