Face-sex categorisation is better above-fixation than below: Evidence from the Reach-to-Touch paradigm
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1
Macquarie University, Cognitive Science, Australia
The masked congruence effect (MCE) elicited by nonconscious faces in a sex-categorisation task has recently been shown to be sensitive to the effects of attention (Quek & Finkbeiner, 2013). Here we investigate how spatial location along the vertical meridian modulates the MCE for face-sex categorisation. Participants made left and right 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 masked prime face which was either congruent (i.e. same sex) or incongruent (i.e. opposite sex) with the target. In the Reach-to-Touch paradigm, participants typically classify targets more efficiently (i.e. their finger heads in the correct direction earlier and faster) on congruent trials compared to incongruent. We observed an upper-hemifield advantage in the timecourse of this masked congruence effect (MCE), such that primes affected target classification sooner when presented in the upper visual field (UVF) compared to the lower visual field (LVF). Moreover, there was a differential benefit of attention between the vertical hemifields, in that the MCE was dependent on the appropriate allocation of spatial attention in the LVF, but not the UVF. Taken together, these behavioural findings suggest that the processing of faces qua faces (e.g. sex-categorisation) is more robust in upper-hemifield locations.
Keywords:
spatial attention,
face processing,
masked priming,
arm movements,
vertical asymmetry
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Attention
Citation:
Finkbeiner
M and
Quek
G
(2015). Face-sex categorisation is better above-fixation than below: Evidence from the Reach-to-Touch paradigm.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00115
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
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Correspondence:
Ms. Genevieve Quek, Macquarie University, Cognitive Science, Sydney, Australia, genevieve.quek@mq.edu.au