Biases of categorical sex perception: what are they and how do we gauge them?

Gait, face, and hand representations all contain sexually dimorphic cues that viewers can exploit, though discrimination is subject to perturbations from sex-priming, sex after-effects, and sex response strategies. Inasmuch as those phenomena arise in response to multiple stimulus categories, they allow predictions to be made regarding the generality of sex processing neural mechanisms. Certain considerations arise however when documenting and interpreting these effects, particularly in the case of sex response strategy: male bias (e.g. Wild et al., 2000). With that in mind, the question of how to model pan-stimulus, sex processing phenomena like male bias is the focus of this presentation. Specifically, we intend to: (1) describe within- and across-domain accounts of sex processing biases; (2) discuss the related analytical issues, particularly with respect to male bias; and finally (3) suggest how these behavioural patterns might be modelled in future, such that sex processing can be uncoupled from stimulus processing.