The Trajectory of Pseudoneglect in Adults: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Neurologically healthy adults tend to display a reliable leftward perceptual bias during visuospatial tasks, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect. However, the phenomenon in older adults is not well understood, and a synthesis of research that examines pseudoneglect using the line bisection task, as well as other tasks, in the context of aging is lacking. The aim of the current systematic review is to integrate the available research on pseudoneglect in late adulthood, and to discuss the association between age and a bias to the left hemispace. The systematic search revealed that five different tasks have been used to examine pseudoneglect in younger and older adults, and that participants over 60 years of age have demonstrated inconsistent perceptual biases (e.g., enhanced leftward bias, suppressed leftward bias, and rightward bias). Based on current evidence, although some age-related trends in the perceptual bias can be identified within each task, no firm conclusions about the effects of age on pseudoneglect can be drawn. A number of recommendations for future research are outlined throughout the review, including use of smaller age ranges within age groups, differentiating between neurologically healthy participants and those with clinical diagnoses, continued examination of gender, and consistent use of stimuli and methods of analyses within each task to improve internal comparability.

The reliability of pseudoneglect is task dependent

“…When data were averaged across both testing session and task, a significant effect of pseudoneglect was identified, supporting the majority of previous literature (Brooks et al, 2014;Friedrich et al, 2018;Jewell & McCourt, 2000). For each task and each testing session an average left-ward bisection error was also identified (Figures 6 and 8), however the only task to show significant effects of pseudoneglect was line-bisection, and session two was the only session to produce a significant mean effect of pseudoneglect.…”

“…However, neurotypical individuals typically transect the line further to the left of its true midpoint (Benwell et al, 2014;Learmonth et al, 2015;Manning et al, 1990;McCourt & Olafson, 1997;Nicholls & Roberts, 2002). This phenomenon is known as pseudoneglect and has been repeatedly identified among the general population (Brooks et al, 2016;Friedrich et al, 2018;Jewell & McCourt, 2000) and is thought to be a result of a slight, lateralised bias to spatial attention (Heilman & Van Den Abell, 1979;Kinsbourne, 1970). Knowledge of cause and contributions of pseudoneglect can help to aid our understanding of spatial attention in neurotypical individuals as well as disorders of attention such as spatial neglect.…”

Improved Accuracy on Lateralized Spatial Judgments in Healthy Aging

“…Replicating prior literature, in older adults, we found a reduced leftward deviation (Jewell & McCourt, 2000). However, it is notable that the literature is not consistent on this issue with some studies showing reduction in pseudoneglect (or even rightward bias) and others showing increases in pseudoneglect with aging (Friedrich, Hunter, & Elias, 2018).…”

Intra- and inter-task reliability of spatial attention measures in healthy older adults

“…It recently become apparent that the direction of the spatial biases in cognitively healthy older participants are even less consistent across the wider literature [14] and below we briefly present findings for the 5 most commonly used spatial tasks described above.…”