Abstract
When traversing through an aperture, such as a doorway, people characteristically deviate towards the right. This rightward deviation can be explained by a rightward attentional bias which leads to rightward bisections in far space. It is also possible, however, that left or right driving practices affect the deviation. To explore this possibility, Australian (left-side drivers) and Swiss (right-side drivers) participants (n = 36 & 34) walked through the middle of an aperture. To control for the sway of the body, participants started with either their left or right foot. Sway had a significant effect on participants’ position in the doorway and the amount of sway was greater for Australians—perhaps due to national differences in gait. There was a significant rightward deviation for the Swiss, but not for the Australians. It is suggested that driving practices have a small additive effect on rightward attentional biases whereby the bias is increased for people who drive on the right and reduced in people who drive on the left.
Highlights
Unilateral spatial neglect is a condition characterised by a reduced ability to attend to one side of space
When the data were collapsed across all conditions and groups, there was a significant bias of 3.7mm to the right of true centre [t(69) = 2.255, p = .027]
The current study examined the effect of national driving practices on ambulatory asymmetries when passing through a doorway
Summary
Unilateral spatial neglect is a condition characterised by a reduced ability to attend to one side of space. The failure of neglect patients to attend to the left side of stimuli extends to other clinical tasks including target cancellation [3, 4] and judgements of relative luminosity [5]. For stimuli located within reach (peripersonal space), a small, but consistent, leftward bias is observed which is termed pseudoneglect [6, 7]. When carrying out the line bisection tasks, healthy individuals transect the line slightly to the left of true centre. The leftward bisection bias is thought to be the result of a slight over-attendance to the left side of the line [2]. For stimuli located outside of reach (extrapersonal space), a rightward bias of attention has been observed [8, 9]. A dissociation between near and far space is supported by neurological research showing activation of the dorsal (intraparietal sulcus) and ventral (medial temporal cortex) streams for the bisection of lines placed in near and far space, respectively [10]
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