The bilateral advantage for famous faces: interhemispheric communication or competition?

The bilateral advantage for the perception of famous faces was investigated using a redundant target procedure. In experiment 1 we compared simultaneous presentation of stimuli (a) bilaterally and (b) one above the other in the central field. Results showed a redundancy advantage, but only when faces were presented bilaterally. This result lends support to the notion of interhemispheric communication using cross-hemisphere representations. Experiment 2 examined the nature of such communication by comparing bilateral presentation of identical face images, with bilateral presentation of different images of the same person. When asked to make a familiar/unfamiliar face judgement, participants showed evidence for a redundancy advantage under both bilateral conditions. This suggests that the nature of the information shared in interhemispheric communication is abstract, rather than being tied to superficial stimulus properties.