A meta-analysis of the line bisection task in children

Abstract

Young adults exhibit a subtle, group-level asymmetry of lateral spatial attention favouring the left hemispace over the right (pseudoneglect). We have recently shown that leftward biases are maintained in older adults aged ≥50 when measured using the line bisection task (Learmonth and Papadatou-Pastou 2021). Here we present a meta-analysis of spatial biases in children aged ≤16 years. Databases (PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus) and pre-print servers (bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PsyArXiv) were searched up to 8th March 2021 for studies involving children aged ≤16, who were tested using the line bisection or landmark task, and who had not been recruited as an atypically developing group. Thirty-six datasets from 33 studies, involving 2515 children, were included. A small leftward bias was identified overall (Cohen’s d = -.18, 95% CI = -.36, -.01). No spatial bias was identified when the 33 line bisection studies were analysed separately (d = -.16, 95% CI = -.35, .04). Moderator analysis of the line bisection task found a strong influence of the hand that was used to bisect the line, with right-handed actions resulting in right-biased bisections, and left-handed actions in left-biased bisections (symmetrical neglect). Bisections were slightly more leftward in studies that included a higher percentage of boys relative to girls. Age, hand preference, and the control group status of the children did not moderate spatial biases and we found no evidence of small study publication bias. However, the number of studies included in each moderator analysis was small. This meta-analysis confirms that pseudoneglect is present in children, but its detection is dependent on the task that is used.

Cerebral Polymorphisms for Lateralisation: Modelling the Genetic and Phenotypic Architectures of Multiple Functional Modules

“…The landmark test therefore appears at population level to be independent of the other three tasks, with about 21% of the participants atypical for the landmark task, showing left-hemisphere dominance. The independence of handedness and the landmark (line bisection) tasks in experimental studies (non-fMRI) is also confirmed in meta-analyses in children and in adults [319,320].…”

Development of laterality: Asymmetrical human behaviors and perceptual biases

“…With regards to the elderly, due to the strong heterogeneity of the past studies, it is still difficult to draw any conclusion concerning the suggested weaker leftward bias (Friedrich et al, 2018). What is most likely to be certain is that pseudoneglect exists since childhood (see for a recent meta-analysis Kaul et al, 2021) and seems to remain present throughout an individual's lifespan (see for a recent meta-analysis Learmonth & Papadatou-Pastou, 2022).…”

Accuracy and precision of responses to visual analog scales: Inter- and intra-individual variability

“…The largest set of data comes from studies of what Bowers and Heilman (1980) dubbed "pseudoneglect", a characteristic by which neurologically normal subjects generally make left-sided errors when asked to mark the midpoint of a line. There is an overwhelming and diverse amount of evidence of pseudoneglect in visual line bisection (for reviews, see Friedrich, Hunter, & Elias, 2018;Jewell & McCourt, 2000;Kaul, Papadatou-Pastou, & Learmonth, 2021;Learmonth & Papadatou-Pastou, 2022) and the number of variables that moderate its magnitude is very large, including psychiatric conditions, action video gaming experience, or procedural characteristics of the visual bisection task (see, e.g., Bediou, Adams, Mayer, Tipton, Green, & Bavelier, 2018;Ciricugno, Bartlett, Gwinn, Carragher, & Nicholls, 2021;García-Pérez & Peli, 2014;Latham, Patston, & Tippett, 2014;Ochando & Zago, 2018;Rao, Arasappa, Reddy, Venkatasubramanian, & Reddy, 2015;Ribolsi, Di Lorenzo, Lisi, Niolu, & Siracusano, 2015;Saj, Heiz, Van Calster, & Barisnikov, 2020). We consider all of these data as indirect evidence against the assumption because they only corroborate that respondents intending to mark the midpoint of a line err at doing it, but this body of research does not provide any indication as to whether similar errors occur (and in what direction) when intending to mark alternative positions on the line.…”