Lateral and vertical attentional biases in normal individuals

When normal people attempt to bisect lines they often make their mark to the left of midline (pseudoneglect) and when attempting to bisect radial lines normal people tend to bisect distal to the actual midline. These biases might be related to asymmetrical activation induced by making spatial computations or attention-intentional preferences. The purpose of this study was to learn if in the absence of spatial computations normal subjects would demonstrate a left and upward bias.

Normal subjects (139) were given 8 pegs and asked to place these pegs anywhere on a 2-foot-square board.

Overall, the subjects displaced the pegs to the left and upward.

The overall left-distal bias observed in this experiment was not induced by spatial computation or misperceptions, but is consistent with the postulate that the right hemisphere is dominant for attention-intention and has a relatively distal bias.