Hemispatial asymmetries in judgment of stimulus size

Recent research has demonstrated a leftward bias in judgments of size. In the present experiments, hemispatial size bias was measured through simultaneous presentation of a circle and an ellipse varying in horizontal or vertical extent. A consistent leftward bias of horizontal size judgments (but not vertical) was obtained; at the point of subjective equality, the width of the objects that were presented in left hemispace was smaller than the width of the objects that were presented in right hemispace. These data suggest that the horizontal extent of stimuli appear larger in left hemispace than in right hemispace. Results also indicated that symmetrical stimulus presentation, with respect to the vertical meridian, is required for the bias to emerge. Furthermore, increasing or decreasing stimulus eccentricity weakened the effect. Attenuation of this bias upon the manipulation of parameters indicates that this phenomenon is context specific and is affected by similar parameters that are known to influence the magnitude of error in pseudoneglect.