Holistic processing – Essaylink

Brain and behaviors assessment information:

Question: literature review 1500 words

“Summarise the neurophysiological evidence for the right hemisphere differing from the left hemisphere in holistic processing, with special reference to facial recognition.”

Need to find a new article 2017/2019:

(Marking will be performed through Grade Mark):

Introduction: Identification of the topic and how it will be addressed in the body of the research review

Introduction: Outline of main points

Body: Examination of various perspectives on the topic

Body: Critical review of this research literature

Body: A logical and coherent argument made

Body: Appropriate and sufficient research evidence to support the argument

Conclusion: Summary of main points

Conclusion: Has the question been answered appropriately?

Overall: written style Research review

Referencing  – APA referencing

From an “individual differences” point-of-view, it’s accepted that people vary in hemispheric dominance, and while some are strongly left dominant, others might be slightly less left dominant (hence have slightly greater access to RH processing specialisations). This view is contentious, and one needs to be very careful how these ideas are expressed practically. Nevertheless, this simplistic representation of hemispheric preference works for the following demonstration that was conducted in class.

The following sheet was handed out;

Five faces were then shown in series (i.e., one after the other), such as this one;

Then this array of 9 faces were shown – you were asked to choose the face that matched the earlier (single face) presentation. In this example, the correct answer would be “5” and you would write that number down on the scoresheet

Upon completion of the facial matching task, you would have completed the 20-item Zenhausern Preference Test (PT; you can look this up on the internet if you want to learn about it in more detail). It’s a survey with moderate validity, which is presumed to measure “hemisphericity” in individuals, i.e., whether you are an RH person, or an LH person (or both, if you scored equally for even and odd numbers…..if you recall how the survey was “marked”).

You marked your own facial recognition task as a score out of 5 (where 5/5 indicates you matched all 5 faces correctly), and then you marked your PT as either “LH” or “RH” (presuming you’re not both)

Results were then collected and collated. The assumption (from the theory presented above) was that individuals who self-identified as RH based on their score on the PT would, on average, score slightly better on the facial recognition task than those identifying as LH.

That’s because the RH facilitates holistic processing, including facial recognition, so these individuals are presumed to be slightly better at this ability (note that normally the hemispheres “talk” to each other, so the difference in facial recognition isn’t great, but will show up if enough people are tested).

In class we might have supported this hypothesis with the data we collected. If the demonstration didn’t work, it’s likely due to the fact that the difference in ability between LH and RH people is only minor, so we need a lot of people to demonstrate it empirically. We didn’t have that many in class but with any luck the finding was in the direction we predicted.

This lead to the research review question for Tutorial 2;

“Summarise the neurophysiological evidence for the right hemisphere differing from the left hemisphere in holistic processing, with special reference to facial recognition.”

Should this topic be chosen as the assessment question, the following articles (available on e-journals from the library) might come in handy.

They are a little old, so be on the lookout for some newer ones (maybe 2017- 2019).