Lateral differences for person perception: effects of task on visual processing of handwriting.

Sergent and Bindra suggested that identification of faces using few different stimuli engages mainly the left hemisphere and, conversely, that discrimination of faces using more stimuli engages mainly the right hemisphere. The present study examined whether this suggestion holds for the perception of handwriting which, like faces, authorizes the perception of "persons". Normal adults were presented stimuli consisting of a word written in various hands, laterally displayed for 180 msec. Exp. 1 (identification) was conducted with 8 subjects, who were asked to identify (push-button) four different stimuli by means of an associated first name. Exp. 2 (discrimination) was conducted with 16 subjects who were asked to make same/different judgments between a central stimulus and a lateral one under three experimental conditions, normal, mirror-reversed, and inverted presentations of both members of the pair. The results suggest that the direction of asymmetry depends more on the amount of stimuli than on the task and that familiarity with the stimuli is an important variable.