Near-hand effects are robust: Three OSF pre-registered replications of visual biases in perihand space

Abstract

Previous work provides evidence that observers experience visual processing changes when they view stimuli in perihand space. For example, participants show facilitated target detection near the hands and enhanced visual working memory for orientation, but not color, information. However, recent investigations have questioned the reliability of these near-hand effects (Adringa et al., 2018; Dosso & Kingstone, 2018). We addressed this controversy by running three experiments pre-registered through the Open Science Framework. Experiment 1 was a direct replication of the seminal study on facilitated target detection near the hands (Reed et al., 2006, Experiment 1) in which participants performed the Posner attentional orienting paradigm while placing a single hand either near or far from the display. Experiment 2 was a direct replication of a recent experiment that failed to find near-hand facilitation in the same paradigm (Dosso & Kingstone, 2018, Experiment 4). Finally, Experiment 3 was a direct replication of a study in which hand proximity influenced working memory performance in a change detection paradigm (Kelly & Brockmole, 2014). Although the pattern of results we found across experiments differed from the original studies, critically, across all three experiments we found significant interactions that imply the hands’ presence altered visual processing. More specifically, in Experiment 1 target detection times changed depending upon whether participants did or did not place a single hand near the display. Interestingly, we found a similar pattern of results in Experiment 2, failing to replicate Dosso & Kingstone’s (2018) finding that the hands did not affect performance in this paradigm. In Experiment 3, participants’ performance in detecting orientation versus color changes differed depending upon whether they held both hands near the display or placed their hands in their laps. Taken together, our pre-registered replications bolster evidence favoring the robustness of near-hand effects.