Differential Lateralization for Words and Faces: Category or Psychophysics?

Mercure, Evelyne; Dick, Frederic; Halit, Hanife; Kaufman, Jordy; Johnson, Mark H.

doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20137

Cited by 59 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(102 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Also, neutral words elicited larger amplitudes at PO7 than at P8 and O2. These findings were consistent with left-lateralized word N170 found in previous researches (Mercure et al, 2008;Rossion et al, 2003). However, different pattern emerged with regard to fat-and thin-related words in WD group.…”

Section: Negative Bias Toward Fatness-related Words During Early Procsupporting

confidence: 92%

Attentional biases among body-dissatisfied young women: An ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation

Gao

Deng

Chen

et al. 2011

International Journal of Psychophysiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Negative Bias Toward Fatness-related Words During Early Procsupporting

confidence: 92%

Attentional biases among body-dissatisfied young women: An ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation

Gao

Deng

Chen

et al. 2011

International Journal of Psychophysiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Consistently, studies using ERPs reveal a stronger N170 component in the LH over the RH in response to printed words (for recent examples, see Maurer, Rossion, & McCandliss, 2008;Mercure, Dick, Halit, Kaufman, & Johnson, 2008), and neuroimaging studies have identified a region of the inferior temporal cortex, the Visual Word Form Area ( VWFA), that shows greater selectivity for words over other visual stimuli, especially in the LH Cohen et al, 2000;Puce, Allison, Asgari, Gore, & McCarthy, 1996). Finally, individuals with LH vOT lesions are impaired in word reading ("pure alexia") to a greater degree than is the case after a lesion to the homologous RH region (e.g., Behrmann & Plaut, 2013a;Kleinschmidt & Cohen, 2006).…”

Section: Lateralization Of Words In Right-handersmentioning

confidence: 53%

Variable Left-hemisphere Language and Orthographic Lateralization Reduces Right-hemisphere Face Lateralization

Dundas

Plaut²,

Behrmann³

2015

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is commonly believed that, in right-handed individuals, words and faces are processed by distinct neural systems: one in the left hemisphere (LH) for words and the other in the right hemisphere (RH) for faces. Emerging evidence suggests, however, that hemispheric selectivity for words and for faces may not be independent of each other. One recent account suggests that words become lateralized to the LH to interact more effectively with language regions, and subsequently, as a result of competition with words for representational space, faces become lateralized to the RH. On this interactive account, left-handed individuals, who as a group show greater variability with respect to hemispheric language dominance, might be expected to show greater variability in their degree of RH lateralization of faces as well. The current study uses behavioral measures and ERPs to compare the hemispheric specialization for both words and faces in right- and left-handed adult individuals. Although both right- and left-handed groups demonstrated LH over RH superiority in discrimination accuracy for words, only the right-handed group demonstrated RH over LH advantage in discrimination accuracy for faces. Consistent with this, increased right-handedness was related to an increase in RH superiority for face processing, as measured by the strength of the N170 ERP component. Interestingly, the degree of RH behavioral superiority for face processing and the amplitude of the RH N170 for faces could be predicted by the magnitude of the N170 ERP response to words in the LH. These results are discussed in terms of a theoretical account in which the typical RH face lateralization fails to emerge in individuals with atypical language lateralization because of weakened competition from the LH representation of words.

show abstract

“…However, no learning effect was observed in the right LO (t (11) ϭ Ϫ1.43, p Ͼ 0.05). The failure of observing the learning effect in the right LO might be caused by the hemispheric asymmetry in object perception, because the left hemisphere prefers objects with high-spatial frequency and the right hemisphere shows an opposite advantage (Sergent, 1983;Grabowska and Nowicka, 1996;Mercure et al, 2008). The stimuli in this study were high-contrast line-drawing objects that are preferred stimuli for the left hemisphere, whereas previous studies that reported the learning effect in the right LO used objects with smoothed surfaces in object discrimination tasks (Grill-Spector et al, 2000;Op de Beeck et al, 2006).…”

Section: The Role Of Task Context In Object Learningmentioning

confidence: 62%

The Role of Top-Down Task Context in Learning to Perceive Objects

Song

Hu²,

Li³

et al. 2010

Journal of Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In high-level perceptual regions of the ventral visual pathway in humans, experience shapes the functional properties of the cortex: the fusiform face area responds most strongly to faces of familiar rather than unfamiliar races, and the visual word form area (VWFA) is tuned only to familiar orthographies. But are these regions affected only by the bottom-up stimulus information they receive during learning, or does the effect of perceptual experience depend on the way that stimulus information is used during learning? Here, we test the hypothesis that top-down influences (i.e., task context) modulate the effect of perceptual experience on functional selectivities of the high-level visual cortex. Specifically, we test whether experience with novel visual stimuli produces a greater effect on the VWFA when those stimuli are associated with meanings (via association learning) but produces a greater effect on shape-processing regions when trained in a discrimination task without associated meanings. Our result supports this hypothesis and further shows that learning is transferred to novel objects that share parts with the trained objects. Thus, the effects of experience on selectivities of the high-level visual cortex depend on the task context in which that experience occurs and the perceptual processing strategy by which objects are encoded during learning.

show abstract

Differential Lateralization for Words and Faces: Category or Psychophysics?

Cited by 59 publications

References 60 publications

Attentional biases among body-dissatisfied young women: An ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation

Attentional biases among body-dissatisfied young women: An ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation

Variable Left-hemisphere Language and Orthographic Lateralization Reduces Right-hemisphere Face Lateralization

The Role of Top-Down Task Context in Learning to Perceive Objects

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About