Lateral spatial biases in naturalistic and simulated driving: Does pseudoneglect influence performance?

Whereas a rightward bump is more likely than a leftward bump when walking through a doorway, investigations into potential similar asymmetries for drivers are limited. The research presented here aims to determine the influence of innate lateral spatial biases when driving. Data from the Strategic Highway Research Program Naturalistic Driving Study (SHRP 2 NDS) and a driving simulation were used to address our research questions.

Evidence for abnormal visuospatial attentional processes in the interictal migraineur.

Research shows decreased brain region activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) in people with migraine headache relative to headache-free controls when performing an orienting visuospatial attention task. Functional inactivation of the rTPJ has been associated with rightward performance deviations on laterality-based attention Landmark (LM) and greyscale (GRE) tasks in individuals with unilateral neglect and heightened activation in the rTPJ is associated with leftward deviation, known as pseudoneglect, in controls on these tasks. Given this, we investigated whether migraineurs would lack the leftward deviation found in headache-free controls on visuospatial attention tasks.

Overestimation of self-reported driving exposure: Results from the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study.

Objectives: The accuracy of self-reported driving exposure has questioned the validity of using self-reported mileage to inform research questions. Studies examining the accuracy of self-reported driving exposure compared to objective measures find low validity, with drivers overestimating and underestimating driving distance. The aims of the current study were to (1) examine the discrepancy between self-reported annual mileage and driving exposure the following year and (2) investigate whether these differences depended on age and annual mileage.

Lateral biases in aesthetic and spatial location judgments: differences between tasks and native reading directions.

People exhibit consistent leftward spatial biases across a variety of tasks. However, individuals with a native reading direction other than left-to-right (LTR) show an attenuation of the leftward bias. The current study used procedurally similar tasks to examine spatial ability and aesthetic preferences in LTR and right-to-left (RTL) groups.

The Trajectory of Pseudoneglect in Adults: A Systematic Review.

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.

Crashing Left vs. Right: Examining Navigation Asymmetries Using the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study Data.

The magnitude of leftward bias demonstrated in pseudoneglect has been found to differ between younger and older adults in laboratory settings. The objective of this study was to examine the association between age and asymmetries in navigation in a naturalistic setting by examining the frequency of the location of impact on participants' vehicles during crashes and near crashes. The location of impact following crashes and near crashes, and participant's age and gender were retrieved from the SHRP2 NDS database, a large scale naturalistic driving study.

Left wings to the left: Posing and perceived political orientation.

Images of individuals posing with the left cheek toward the camera are rated as more emotionally expressive than images with the right cheek toward the camera, which is theorized to be due to right hemisphere specialization for emotion processing. Liberals are stereotyped as being more emotional than conservatives. In the present study, we presented images of people displaying either leftward or rightward posing biases in an online task, and asked participants to rate people's perceived political orientation.

Presenting Your Best Self(ie): The Influence of Gender on Vertical Orientation of Selfies on Tinder.

When taking a self-portrait or "selfie" to display in an online dating profile, individuals may intuitively manipulate the vertical camera angle to embody how they want to be perceived by the opposite sex. Concepts from evolutionary psychology and grounded cognition suggest that this manipulation can provide cues of physical height and impressions of power to the viewer which are qualities found to influence mate-selection. We predicted that men would orient selfies more often from below to appear taller (i.

Developmental trajectory of pseudoneglect in adults using the greyscales task.

Neurologically healthy adults display a reliable but slight leftward spatial bias, and this bias appears to change with age (Jewell & McCourt, 2000). Studies using line bisection and the landmark task to investigate pseudoneglect in participants over 60 years of age have shown suppression and near reversal of the leftward response bias. The current research investigates the developmental trajectory of perceptual biases using the greyscales task-a task that exhibits strengths compared to the line bisection and landmark task, as it generates a stronger and more consistent bias.

Family matters: Directionality of turning bias while kissing is modulated by context.

When leaning forward to kiss to a romantic partner, individuals tend to direct their kiss to the right more often than the left. Studies have consistently demonstrated this kissing asymmetry, although other factors known to influence lateral biases, such as sex or situational context, had yet to be explored. The primary purpose of our study was to investigate if turning direction was consistent between a romantic (parent-parent) and parental (parent-child) kissing context, and secondly, to examine if sex differences influenced turning bias between parent-child kissing partners.

Did Buddha turn the other cheek too? A comparison of posing biases between Jesus and Buddha.

People tend to exhibit a leftward bias in posing. Various studies suggest that posing to the left portrays a stronger emotion, whereas posing to the right portrays a more neutral emotion. Religions such as Christianity emphasize the role of strong emotions in religious experience, whereas religions such as Buddhism emphasize the calming of emotions as being important.

Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice.

Despite an overall body symmetry, human behavior is full of examples of asymmetry, from writing or gesturing to kissing and cradling. Prior research has revealed that theatre patrons show a bias towards sitting on the right side of a movie theatre. Two competing theories have attempted to explain this seating asymmetry: one posits that expectation of processing demand drives the bias; the other posits that basic motor asymmetries drive the bias.

The thinker: opposing directionality of lighting bias within sculptural artwork.

Individuals tend to perceive the direction of light to come from above and slightly from the left; it has been speculated that this phenomenon is also producing similar lighting preferences within 2-dimensional artworks (e.g., paintings, advertisements).

Native reading direction influences lateral biases in the perception of shape from shading.

Although neurologically normal individuals often exhibit leftward biases of perception and attention, known as pseudoneglect, factors such as lighting, spatial location and native reading direction have been found to modulate these biases. To investigate lighting and spatial biases in left-to-right and right-to-left readers search times were measured in a target finding task where lighting and target locations were manipulated. Target search times under upper-left lighting were significantly shorter than lower-left, upper-right and lower-right lighting among left-to-right readers.

Behavioural asymmetries on the greyscales task: The influence of native reading direction.

Reliable leftward attentional and perceptual biases demonstrated in a variety of visuospatial tasks have been found to deviate from the left in research examining the influence of scanning habits. The aim of the current research was to examine the influence of native script direction on pseudoneglect during the greyscales task in a representative sample of native right-to-left readers. Fifty-four native left-to-right readers and 43 right-to-left readers completed the greyscales task, which required judging the darker of two left-right mirrored brightness gradients.

Lower-right and upper-left biases within upper and lower visual fields in a circular array task.

Visuospatial performance varies along the horizontal and vertical dimensions, resulting in behavioral biases such as pseudoneglect. The interaction between the horizontal and vertical attentional biases was investigated using a novel circular array task capable of conveying relative brightness information across vertical and horizontal dimensions simultaneously. In a novel circular array task comprised of six discs, the grayscale gradient was disrupted by switching two grayscale values within the array.

Dynamic stimuli: accentuating aesthetic preference biases.

Despite humans' preference for symmetry, artwork often portrays asymmetrical characteristics that influence the viewer's aesthetic preference for the image. When presented with asymmetrical images, aesthetic preference is often given to images whose content flows from left-to-right and whose mass is located on the right of the image. Cerebral lateralization has been suggested to account for the left-to-right directionality bias; however, the influence of cultural factors, such as scanning habits, on aesthetic preference biases is debated.

Native reading direction and corresponding preferences for left- or right-lit images.

The first language an individual learns has been shown to influence performance on cognitive tasks. Individuals who first learn to read and write in a left-to-right direction (native left-to-right readers) tend to bisect lines left of centre and draw counterclockwise circles, whereas those who learn to read and write from right-to-left (native right-to-left readers) will bisect lines closer to the objective centre and draw circles in a clockwise direction. The aim of the current study was to assess group differences in image preferences and eye movements when participants are simultaneously presented with an original and mirror image with an obvious illumination difference.

Lateral bias in theatre-seat choice.

Examples of behavioural asymmetries are common in the range of human behaviour; even when faced with a symmetrical environment people demonstrate reliable asymmetries in behaviours like gesturing, cradling, and even seating. One such asymmetry is the observation that participants tend to choose seats to the right of the screen when asked to select their preferred seating location in a movie theatre. However, these results are based on seat selection using a seating chart rather than examining real seat choice behaviour in the theatre context.

Dorsal stream contributions to perceptual asymmetries.

Neurologically normal individuals show a bias toward the left side of space, referred to as pseudoneglect due to its similarity to clinical hemispatial neglect. The left bias appears to be stronger in the lower visual field during free-viewing, which could result from preferential dorsal stream processing. The current experiments used modified greyscales tasks, incorporating motion and isoluminant color, to explore whether targeting dorsal or ventral stream processing influenced the strength of the left bias.

Upper and lower visual field differences in perceptual asymmetries.

A leftward spatial bias has been observed with visuospatial attention tasks, including line bisection and the greyscales task. Upper and lower visual field differences have been observed on various tasks, with a lower visual field advantage occurring for motion, global processing and coordinate spatial judgments. Upper visual field advantages occur for visual search, local processing and categorical judgments.

Perceptual asymmetries in greyscales: object-based versus space-based influences.

Neurologically normal individuals exhibit leftward spatial biases, resulting from object- and space-based biases; however their relative contributions to the overall bias remain unknown. Relative position within the display has not often been considered, with similar spatial conditions being collapsed across. Study 1 used the greyscales task to investigate the influence of relative position and object- and space-based contributions.

Free viewing perceptual asymmetry for distance judgments: objects in right hemispace are closer than they appear.

Neurologically normal individuals demonstrate leftward biases in tasks of line bisection and judgments of brightness, numerosity, and size. Normals also report and demonstrate a right-sided bias when bumping into objects. Collectively, these results suggest that normals relatively neglect the right hemispace.

Lateral biases in lighting of abstract artwork.

Previous studies examining perceptual biases in art have revealed that paintings tend to be lit from above and to the left. Abstract images provide a way of testing for the left-light bias while controlling for cues such as posing biases, ground line, shadows, and reflections. A total of 42 participants completed a task that required moving a "virtual flashlight" across the surface of abstract images presented on a computer screen: 20 images (presented both right-side-up and upside down) were used in the study.

Do perceptual asymmetries differ in peripersonal and extrapersonal space?

A space-based dissociation has been observed in clinical hemineglect, wherein neglect can be specific to either peripersonal or extrapersonal space. This same dissociation might occur in pseudoneglect, where both space-based and visual field differences have been observed. Upper and bottom visual field differences were examined within-subjects (N = 39), by presenting the greyscales task in both peripersonal and extrapersonal space.