Fixation and attention control in lateralised target detection and free recall with words

The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that lateralised target detection in the visual modality would produce results similar in magnitude, reliability, and validity to those obtained in the auditory modality with an analogue task. Thus, it was expected that it would produce laterality effects that are larger, more reliable, and more valid than those obtained in a free recall task. The claim that target detection provides its own attention control also led to the hypothesis that the magnitude of laterality effects should be affected by fixation control in free recall but not target detection. A total of 349 right-handed participants completed a word recognition task with either free recall or target detection with or without fixation control. Only the finding that free recall was generally more reliable than target detection went contrary to the hypotheses. This finding is interpreted as reflecting a consistent attentional bias that stems from task requirements. In general, the results suggest that target detection without fixation control has much potential as a measure of perceptual asymmetries in the visual modality.