From spatial bias to temporal integration: Anorthoscopy neutralizes pseudoneglect

The present study investigated interaction between spatio-temporal integration under conditions of sensory impoverishment, "anorthoscopic viewing", and the lateralized spatial biases, such as pseudoneglect, aiming to clarify whether such asymmetries originate from early perceptual mechanisms or from intrinsic properties of high-level neural representations. A 64-object array, organized in 2 × 6, was presented in two experiments: (1) anorthoscopic viewing (stimuli were presented sliding behind a static aperture) and (2) the whole condition. Participants were asked to recall as many items as possible for each trial in both experiments. Results demonstrate a robust pseudoneglect effect in Experiment 2, characterized by significantly higher recall for items on the left side of the arrays compared to the right. Pseudoneglect was absent in the anorthoscopic condition. Notably, while the recall of left-sided items decreased during the anorthoscopic session, performance for right-sided objects remained statistically stable across both experiments. These findings indicate that anorthoscopic procedure doesn't impair performance through generic degradation or excessive cognitive load. Because attentional and mnemonic factors interact, these results should be interpreted as reflecting an interplay between the two mechanisms. Accordingly, we suggest that pseudoneglect is not an intrinsic property of static internal mental representations, but a dynamic consequence of active visual scanning.