Facial asymmetry: Perceptual awareness and lateral differences.

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Abstract
Normal subjects participated in 4 experiments designed to examine their level of awareness of facial asymmetry and the possible lateralization of this awareness. For centrally displayed faces and symmetrical chimeras, subjects considered the normal face and its mirror-image as highly similar, and the 2 composite chimeras as highly dissimilar (Exp. [experiment] 1, N = 10), but were unable to decide if the asymmetrical displayed stimulus was a normal or a mirrored face (Exp. 2, N = 30) except for experimentally familiarized subjects. For laterally displayed faces and chimeras, same/different judgements about pairs of stimuli (Exp. 3, N = 12) and face/nonface judgements (Exp. 4, N = 36) were very difficult even for trained subjects. There was evidence for an advantage of the right visual field/left cerebral hemisphere. Apparently, there is an awareness of facial asymmetry but not of the lateral direction of this asymmetry, this awareness depends more on the processing of facial features than on holistic characteristics, and within-face redundancy is an important parameter.