CogLab: Brain Asymmetry

1/25/12 6:49 AM

Brain Asymmetry
What methods did we employ in this experiment?
This experiment was based on a technique proposed by Rueckert (2005). On each trial of the experiment, two chimeric faces were shown and you were asked to indicate which one appeared younger. In reality, the two faces were always mirror images of each other, so they had identical age information. Thus, just based on the characteristics of the images, we would expect no preference for one image over another. The independent variable in this experiment was the construction of the chimeric faces. For one of the faces, the left side of the face was younger than the right side of the face. The opposite was true for the mirror image chimeric face.

What do we predict participants will do? Why?

We predict different behavior for right-handed and left-handed observers. For a right-handed observer, the right hemisphere tends to be more strongly involved in judgments about faces than the left hemisphere. In addition, when staring at the middle of a face, the information to the left of fixation goes first to the right hemisphere, while information to the right of fixation goes first to the left hemisphere. Left-handed people do not show as strong differences between the left and right hemispheres. As a result, we expect left-handed subjects will less often chose the chimeric face with the younger half on the left. The left-handed subjects should have a smaller percentage than the right-handed subjects. This finding is an important control because it indicates that the bias among right handed subjects is not due to a general left-view bias (that might arise from living in a world in which reading goes from left to right).

How robust is this effect? Are there limits to this effect?

The difference between right-handed and left-handed people tends to be quite strong and exists for many different situations. However, an individual person may not show the effect. The lack of an effect for an individual may indicate that hemispheric differences are not very large, or that they judge faces differently than other people. There is natural variation across people.

Average experiment results for class: PSYC2215-Spring2012

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CogLab: Brain Asymmetry

1/25/12 6:49 AM

Brain Asymmetry
In this experiment each participant was in one of 2 versions: Right handed Left handed

Different versions are based on self-reports of handedness. For right-handed people, the right hemisphere of the brain is more likely to be involved in making judgments about facial qualities (including age). Parts of the visual scene on the left side of eye fixation are sent to the right hemisphere, so the expected pattern of results for right-handed observers is that they report that the chimeric face with the younger half on the left will look younger than the mirror image (with the younger half on the right). In contrast, left-handed people tend to not show the brain hemisphere differences as strongly as right handed people. Thus, the expectation is that the percentage of reports that the chimeric face with the younger half on the left looked younger will be smaller for left-handed people than for right-handed people. Although many effects are best understood by looking at the averages across a group of people, you can also view your own data for this experiment, or see all of your data on the Access your account page.

Data summary: Right handed

Statistics are based on 10 participants.

Averages across participants

Percentage of choices with younger half face on left

60.714287

Standard deviations across participants

Percentage of choices with younger half face on left

26.7791

Data summary: Left handed

Statistics are based on 1 participants.

Averages across participants

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CogLab: Brain Asymmetry

1/25/12 6:49 AM

Percentage of choices with younger half face on left

78.57143

Standard deviations across participants

Percentage of choices with younger half face on left

0.0

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