Face recognition: a general or specific right hemisphere capacity?

Face-recognition ability has been claimed to be qualitatively different from other pattern-recognition abilities. One argument for this claim is the finding of a significant right hemisphere advantage for the recognition of upright but not inverted faces. However, this argument is justified only if this orientation-sensitive pattern is unique to faces. In the present study, comparable patterns of orientation-sensitive involvement of the right hemisphere are found for the recognition of faces and houses. This finding is interpreted as evidence for a right hemisphere schema formation capacity that is applied not only to upright faces but also to other familiar classes of stimuli in their canonical upright orientation. It is suggested that any greater right hemisphere involvement in the recognition of upright faces is due to our greater expertise at recognizing faces than other stimulus types. We also find evidence that only a subset of right-handed adults show orientation-sensitive right hemisphere involvement in the recognition of faces and houses: in particular, those dextrals with a characteristic hemispheric arousal asymmetry in favor of the right hemisphere. In contrast, dextrals with a characteristic arousal asymmetry in favor of the left hemisphere do not show significant visual field asymmetries for faces or houses in either upright or inverted orientations.