Related but different: Examining pseudoneglect in audition, touch and vision

Abstract

Although researchers have consistently demonstrated a leftward attentional bias in visual and representational (e.g. tactile/mental number line) line bisection tasks, the results from audition have been mixed. Differences in methodology between auditory and visual bisection tasks, especially with regards to the location of stimuli of peripersonal versus extrapersonal space, have also meant that researchers have not been able to compare performance in visual, tactile and auditory line bisection directly. In this research, 39 neurologically typical individuals participated in standard visual and tactile line bisection tasks, together with a newly developed auditory line bisection task. Results demonstrated significant leftward bisection biases across all three modalities. Hence, we demonstrate auditory pseudoneglect in peripersonal space for the first time. Tactile and auditory line bisections showed a relatively small but statistically reliable correlation, but neither task correlated with visual line bisection. This suggests that the processes underlying auditory line bisection are not synonymous to those involved in visual perceptual bisection, and further we argue that this bias may be related to representational pseudoneglect.