Hemispheric preference and lateral eye movements evoked by bilateral visual stimuli

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between the direction of lateral eye shifts evoked by bilateral visual stimulation, on the one hand, and verbal vs visuospatial performance, on the other. In males a negative correlation was found between verbal relative to spatial accuracy and the ratio of leftward eye movements. No such relationship was found in females. Additionally, in males body mass index was smaller for those who displayed a greater ratio of leftward eye movements. It was concluded that visually evoked lateral eye shifts might reflect hemispheric preference, similarly as lateral eye movements obtained during the widely used questioning procedure. However, the procedure used in this study for evoking lateral eye shifts seems to be free of some methodological problems of the traditional procedure and is more easy to standardize.