Representational pseudoneglect for detecting changes to Rey–Osterrieth figures

Abstract

When dividing attention between the left and right sides of physical space, most individuals pay slightly more attention to the left side. This phenomenon, known as pseudoneglect, may also occur for the left and right sides of mental representations of stimuli. Representational pseudoneglect has been shown for the recall of real-world scenes and for simple, briefly presented stimuli. The current study sought to investigate the effect of exposure duration and complexity using adaptations of the Rey-Osterrieth figures. Undergraduates (n = 97) were shown a stimulus for 20 s and asked to remember it. Participants were then shown a probe and indicated whether it was the same or different. Results showed that, irrespective of whether an element was added or subtracted, changes on the left side of the remembered image were better detected. These results are consistent with representational pseudoneglect and demonstrate that this effect occurs for complex stimuli when presented for an extended period of time. Representation neglect is therefore unlikely to be the result of an initial saccade to the left-but could be related to the formation or recall of the representation.

A reassessment of the pseudoneglect effect: Attention allocation systems are selectively engaged by semantic and spatial processing.

“…Our findings using object-like abstract shapes are in stark contrast to the findings of Pia et al (2010) and previous work (Aniulis et al, 2016; Churches et al, 2017) using semantically unengaging geometric shapes (circle, rectangle, triangle, Rey-Osterrieth complex figures).These studies revealed consistent, and frequently significant, evidence of a leftward bisection bias. Pia et al (2010) asked participants to bisect a line drawing image of a basset-hound stretched so it resembled two parallel line stimuli with meaningful information at either end.…”

Visuospatial asymmetries do not modulate the cheerleader effect

“…Interestingly, pseudoneglect also influences representational memory 31 , whereby observers show greater accuracy when recalling landmarks that are seen in the LVF compared to the right visual field (RVF) 32 . Similarly, observers are more accurate in recalling changes in complex visual patterns when they occur in the LVF as opposed to the RVF 33 . The cheerleader effect might be modulated by the spatial arrangement of the faces in the group, because the attention of the observer is not equally distributed across the visual field, and consequently, the individual faces in the group.…”

“…As attention is biased toward the LVF 27 , 28 , 39 , we expected that distractor faces within the LVF would be more salient to the observer than those in the RVF 37 , 39 . Increased visual exploration of the LVF could facilitate ensemble coding, as observers show greater accuracy in recalling complex visual scenes viewed in the LVF compared to the RVF 33 . Furthermore, the left gaze bias might also increase the perceived attractiveness of the distractor faces when they are seen in the LVF compared to the RVF 41 , 46 .…”

Evidence for a common mechanism of spatial attention and visual awareness: Towards construct validity of pseudoneglect

“…Another example are tasks that are believed to find pseudoneglect when participants are required to detect objects in random search arrays (for a comprehensive review, e.g., [16]) or at one or two lateral positions [17–19], and with or without attentional cues ([20]; but see [21] for no lateralization effect of cueing). In addition, non-visual tasks such as perceptual judgments of tactile and auditory stimuli [3,22] as well as tests that probe mental representations and imagery ([23–31]; for a review: [32]) also produce left-biased performance, opposite to what is observed in neglect in similar experiments.…”