Downloaded By: [Tommasi, Luca] At: 17:56 1 July 2008 A bias for the female face in the right hemisphere Rosanna Parente University ‘‘G. d’Annunzio’’, Chieti, Italy Luca Tommasi University ‘‘G. d’Annunzio’’, Chieti, Italy, and Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Altenberg, Austria In the present study we assessed the contribution of the two hemispheres to the attribution of gender of faces in male and female observers. Normal and chimeric faces were presented in their canonical orientation and upside-down in a tachistoscopic paradigm. Chimeric faces were composed of two halves (left and right) obtained from photos of individuals of the same sex or from individuals of different sexes. All faces were presented tachistoscopically with a central fixation, the two halves falling in the two visual fields of the observer, who was required to rapidly judge the sex of the face. A left half-face (right-hemispheric) bias for gender attribution with upright faces was observed both in male and female participants, as previously reported. Strikingly, however, the bias depended entirely on female- left/male-right chimeras, revealing a right-hemispheric advantage for the recogni- tion of female faces. The results are discussed in the light of a behavioural bias during development (i.e., maternal cradling). A right-hemispheric bias for face recognition has been reported since at least three decades ago in the neuropsychological literature (Gilbert & Bakan, 1973). When right-handers process facial stimuli an attentional bias is usually found, favouring the left half-face (that falling in the observer’s left visual field) over the right half-face. The leftward bias for facial stimuli appears to be the result of a greater activation of the right hemisphere, arising from that hemisphere’s specialisation for the perception of facial Address correspondence to: Luca Tommasi, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University ‘‘G. d’Annunzio’’, Blocco A, Via dei Vestini 29, I-66013, Chieti, Italy. E-mail: luca.tommasi@unich.it This research is part of the project EDCBNL (Evolution and Development of Cognitive, Behavioural and Neural Lateralization  2006/2009), supported by the Commission of the European Communities within the framework of the specific research and technological development programme ‘‘Integrating and strengthening the European Research Area’’ (initiative ‘‘What it means to be human’’), through a grant to LT. LATERALITY, 2008, 13 (4), 374386 # 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informabusiness http://www.psypress.com/laterality DOI: 10.1080/13576500802103495