Bugs and Faces in the Two Visual Fields: The Analytic/Holistic Processing Dichotomy and Task Sequencing

We report three experiments employing outline face and bug stimuli. Subjects either attended to the spatial relationships between and otherwise independent of the individual feature elements (holistic processing condition), or instead attended (with the same stimuli) to the shape of certain discrete feature elements (analytic condition). They were timed in performing discriminatory manual responses to laterally presented targets and nontargets. A left visual field superiority generally occurred under conditions of holistic processing both for faces and bugs, and a right field superiority when analytic processing was required; effects were rather more apparent in the second of a pair of sequential tasks, when the more difficult of the two tasks came first, for the more difficult of the two tasks, and with target rather than, nontarget stimuli. We conclude that those aspects of a stimulus to which a subject is set to attend can determine lateral asymmetries, as well as the actual stimuli themselves, that an analytic/holistic processing distinction is supported, rather than one based on verbal/visuospatial processing, and that task difficulty and order are important variables to be controlled and studied in this context in future research.