Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to document that instruction effects can occur on tasks typically yielding left visual-field advantages In a lateralized face-recognition task, 40 right-handers (20 men, 20 women) had to memorize pairs of faces and to respond to a probe face displaying positive or negative emotion and presented for 100 msec. 3.8° on the left or right of a fixation cross. Half of the subjects had been instructed to learn the faces through a verbal strategy and the other half through an imagery strategy. Analysis of reaction times yielded significant complex interactions involving gender, coding instruction, visual field, and emotion for both Yes and No responses. A global left visual-field advantage was obtained in the analyses of accuracy and sensitivity data, but no significant effects were recorded in the analysis of decision rule. Thus, the instruction effects on left visual-field advantages were obtained through complex interactions on reaction times only. Further replication of these data would provide a more secure basis for causal interpretations.
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