Physically real and virtual reality exposed line bisection response patterns: visuospatial attention allocation in...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Virtual Reality Research
• Visuospatial Attention

Background:

• Hemispatial attention describes how attention is allocated across the left and right visual fields.
• Pseudoneglect is a common phenomenon where healthy individuals show a leftward bias in line bisection tasks.
• Virtual reality (VR) presents novel environments that may influence cognitive processes like visuospatial attention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate hemispatial attention allocation in virtual reality (VR) compared to real environments.
• To assess the rate and direction of pseudoneglect using a line bisection task (LBT) in both settings.
• To explore how VR influences visuospatial activity and lateral bias.

Main Methods:

• Fifty-one healthy, right-handed college students participated.
• Participants completed a line bisection task in both a physical, real-world environment and a virtual reality environment.
• Line bisection errors were recorded to measure lateral bias.

Main Results:

• Line bisection task errors were individually consistent across real and VR environments.
• A leftward bias (pseudoneglect) was observed in the real environment.
• In the VR environment, the line bisection bias shifted towards the right hemispace.
• Lower right-handedness scores correlated with reduced leftward bias in real environments but increased rightward bias in VR.

Conclusions:

• Visuospatial reality construction in VR is associated with a rightward line bisection bias.
• Virtual reality environments appear to modulate hemispatial attention allocation differently than real-world settings.
• Findings suggest VR's unique properties alter established patterns of visuospatial attention.