ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the creative tension that exists between theory and experimentation and to provide a case study of the way in which mismatches between the two provide the impetus for dynamic changes in our understanding of psychological processes. It provides the thesis that being wrong is frequently more productive than being right. The chapter presents indicates how findings in a study of adult face perception that did not quite match conceptual expectations led to a series of revisions in the model, with each new study yielding results that did not quite suit the model. There were a few studies that had found different directions of advantage in recognizing different categories of faces, for instance, famous faces and unfamiliar faces; or faces of colleagues and of strangers or friends. Newborn infants are differentially responsive to speech and nonspeech signals, with a left-hemisphere advantage for speech.
