Close to me: the effect of asymmetrical environments on spatial attention

Nicholls, Michael E. R.; Roden, S; Loetscher, Tobias; Spence, Charles; Forte, Jason D.

doi:10.1080/00140139.2014.899633

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The presentation of pre-bisected lines and the subsequent judgments of the length of the line's two segments is a common measure of spatial attentional biases (e.g., Harvey, Milner, & Roberts, 1995;McCourt & Jewell, 1999). The pre-bisected line stimuli in this study were modelled on McCourt (2001) and Nicholls et al (2014). Stimuli were presented individually against a uniformly grey background.…”

Section: Landmark Task Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To assess spatial asymmetries in the landmark task, a response bias was calculated for each condition by subtracting the number of left responses from the number of right responses and converting the difference to a percentage of the total number of trials (Nicholls et al, 2014). The bias scores could range from −100 to +100, with negative and positive scores indicating a bias towards the left and right side, respectively.…”

Section: Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unstable world: Recent experience affects spatial perception

2020

Self Cite

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An accurate perception of the space surrounding us is central for effective and safe everyday functioning. Understanding the factors influencing spatial perception is therefore vital. Here, we first confirm previous reports that our cultural reading habits shape the perception of space. Twenty-four left-to-right readers (tested in Australia) and 23 right-to-left readers (tested in Israel) over-attend to information presented on the left and right side of space, respectively. We then show that this cultural bias is highly malleable. By employing a simple mirror-reading task prior to the spatial judgments, we demonstrate that the supposed cultural bias can be easily overridden. These findings question hardwired, lateralisation models of spatial-attentional biases and highlight the need for a dynamic model that takes into account hemispheric lateralisation, cultural habits and situational context.

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Section: Landmark Task Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unstable world: Recent experience affects spatial perception

2020

Self Cite

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“…The leftward bias can be seen in tasks, such as line bisection, in which participants overestimate the relative length on the left (McCourt, 2001;McCourt & Jewell, 1999;Thomas, Castine, Loetscher, & Nicholls, 2015). A leftward overestimation is seen for a range of other discriminations, such as luminance discrimination (Nicholls, Bradshaw, & Mattingley, 1999), for visual search (Nicholls et al, 2014), and even for the left/right mental representations of stimuli (Loftus & Nicholls, 2012;Loftus, Nicholls, Mattingley, Chapman, & Bradshaw, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An investigation of the mechanisms underlying the effects of viewing distance and stimulus length on attentional asymmetries during line bisection

Nicholls

Beckman

Churches

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Clinical neglect patients overattend to stimuli on their right, whereas the general population overattend to the left (pseudoneglect). Both phenomena are affected by viewing distance, whereby the attentional biases are attenuated as the stimulus moves from near to far space. Both are also affected by stimulus length and reduce in strength, or even reverse (the crossover effect), as length decreases. To gain an insight into the cognitive/neural mechanisms that underlie the effects of viewing distance and stimulus length, in two experiments we examined the interaction between the variables. In Experiment 1 we asked university students (n = 20) to perform a horizontal landmark bisection task with lines presented at varying lengths (1.2°, 6.3°, and 18.4°of viewing angle) and distances (450 and 1,350 mm). A crossover effect and pseudoneglect were observed for the short and the long lines, respectively. An effect of viewing distance was only observed for long lines. Experiment 2 was the same, except that the lines were rotated to form vertical lines. No crossover effect was observed for the short lines, but an upward bias was observed for the long lines. Once again, an effect of viewing distance was only apparent for the long lines. These results demonstrate that the crossover effect is not a general property of short lines and is specific to the horizontal dimension. Models of crossover therefore need to incorporate processes related to left-right asymmetries. The results also demonstrate that viewing distance only affects long lines, and that this happens irrespective of orientation. A model of viewing distance is discussed that incorporates a right hemisphere mechanism specialized for an interaction between the ventral and dorsal streams.

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“…Presentation 17.0 software (Neurobehavioral Systems) was used to generate and display task stimuli and record participant responses from standard QWERTY-layout keyboards. The stimuli and procedure were adapted from those used by Nicholls et al (2014). Targets and distractors were distributed across an invisible grid, 20 cells wide x 6 cells high, located in the centre of the display, subtending a visual angle of 28.98°wide x 7.94°high with grid elements evenly spaced approximately 1.50°apart both horizontally and vertically.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnitude of sex differences in visual search varies with target eccentricity

2020

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A recent meta-analysis found no support for the popular theory that superior visuospatial ability in males is attributable to their relatively greater hemispheric asymmetry of neural functions. However, the issue of whether differences in hemispheric laterality could account for differences in visual perception between the sexes has not been systematically investigated. Visual search is an ideal task for such an investigation, as target-position can be systematically varied across the visual field allowing for a detailed analysis of how performance varies with visual field and eccentricity. We recruited 539 undergraduate participants (150 male) and administered a visual search task that required them to identify the presence of a uniquely-oriented triangle amongst distractors. Crucially, target location was systematically varied over the visual field across trials. Males displayed both superior accuracy and shorter reaction time when targets were presented in the left visual field, whilst sex differences systematically diminished when the target was located further rightward. These behavioural results are in line with the notion that greater hemispheric asymmetry in males influences task performance to a varying extent across the visual field, and illustrates the importance of considering task parameters and the influence of sex in behavioural research.

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Close to me: the effect of asymmetrical environments on spatial attention

Cited by 16 publications

References 42 publications

Unstable world: Recent experience affects spatial perception

Unstable world: Recent experience affects spatial perception

An investigation of the mechanisms underlying the effects of viewing distance and stimulus length on attentional asymmetries during line bisection

Magnitude of sex differences in visual search varies with target eccentricity

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