Bisection and Perception of Horizontal Lines in Normal Children

doi:10.1016/S0010-9452(96)80040-2

Cortex

Volume 32, Issue 4, December 1996, Pages 705-715

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-9452(96)80040-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

Simple line bisection is a complex task in which both perceptual/attentional factors and motor factors are involved. Using a judgment task on prebisected lines it is possible to assess independently the role of perceptual/attentional factors. The judgment-bisection relationship was investigated in 37 preschool children aged 4––5 and 70 school children aged 10–12. At bisection, a clear shift of the right hand with age from right to left bisections was observed, more pronounced in right- than in left-handers, and probably related to learned patterns. At judgment, a slight but significant left side overestimation was observed. In right-handers, judgment was related to left-hand but not to right-hand bisection. It is concluded that motor (manual) factors strongly influence visuo-motor bisection in normal children, and it is suggested that the judgment-bisection relationship has to be systematically investigated when bisection is used as a task informing on space perception or on direction of attention.

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Signatures of functional visuospatial asymmetries in early infancy
2022, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Citation Excerpt :
Interestingly, contrary to other behavioral and brain asymmetries (e.g., handedness, language processing), the leftward bias in spatial attention, as assessed behaviorally through manual line bisection tasks, does not appear to be stable throughout development. Indeed, pseudoneglect appears to undergo an inverted U-shaped curve, by which it gradually emerges in children aged 4–12 years (Dellatolas, Coutin, & De Agostini, 1996), peaks in adulthood, and gradually fades or even reverses after 60 years of age (Schmitz & Peigneux, 2011). This developmental pattern may reflect the changing contribution of the right hemisphere to attention-orienting mechanisms across the lifespan.
Adults present a large number of asymmetries in visuospatial behavior that are known to be supported by functional brain lateralization. Although there is evidence of lateralization for motor behavior and language processing in infancy, no study has explored visuospatial attention biases in the early stages of development. In this study, we tested for the presence of a leftward visuospatial bias (i.e., pseudoneglect) in 4- and 5-month-old infants using an adapted version of the line bisection task. Infants were trained to identify the center of a horizontal line (Experiment 1) while their eye gazes were monitored using a remote eye-tracking procedure to measure their potential gazing error. Infants exhibited a robust pseudoneglect, gazing leftward with respect to the veridical midpoint of the horizontal line. To investigate whether infants’ pseudoneglect generalizes to any given object or is dependent on the horizontal dimension, in Experiment 2 we assessed infants’ gaze deployment in vertically oriented lines. No leftward bias was found, suggesting that early visuospatial attention biases in infancy are constrained by the orientation of the visual plane in which the information is organized. The interplay between biological and cultural factors that might contribute to the early establishment of the observed leftward bias in the allocation of visuospatial attention is discussed.
Visuospatial biases in preschool children: Evidence from line bisection in three-dimensional space
2018, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Citation Excerpt :
The observation that these asymmetries got more pronounced with age, and were even absent in the younger children (3-and 4-year-olds), could suggest that children may nevertheless require gradual maturation of certain neural structures or specific spatial experiences (cf. Kazandjian & Chokron, 2008; see Nuerk et al., 2015, for six different mechanisms underlying spatial-numerical biases in children), which are not yet fully realized at the beginning of the preschool age range. Surprisingly, in this youngest group, we did not even observe any clear bias to the right side along the horizontal line—that is, toward the side ipsilateral to the hand used—which could be expected based on other developmental studies reporting such tendencies in preschoolers (cf. Bradshaw et al., 1987; Dellatolas et al., 1996; Hausmann et al., 2003). One may suppose that this is caused by large interindividual differences in the younger children given that their responses were greatly dispersed and appeared both to the left (i.e., consistent with pseudoneglect) and to the right (i.e., consistent with ipsilateral motor tendencies) from the veridical center.
Spatial attention in adults is characterized by systematic asymmetries across all three spatial dimensions. These asymmetries are evident when participants bisect horizontal, vertical, or radial lines and misplace their midpoints to the left, the top, or far from the body, respectively. However, bisection errors are rarely examined during early childhood. In this study, we examined the development of spatial-attentional asymmetries in three-dimensional (3D) space by asking preschool children (aged 3–6 years) to bisect horizontal, vertical, and radial lines. Children erred to the left with horizontal lines and to the top with vertical lines, consistent with the pattern reported in adults. These biases got stronger with age and were absent in the youngest preschoolers. However, by controlling for a possible failure in hitting the line, we observed an additional unpredicted pattern: Children’s pointing systematically deviated away from the line to an empty space on its left side (for vertical and radial lines) or above it (for horizontal lines). Notably, this task-irrelevant deviation was pronounced in children as young as 3 or 4 years. We conclude that asymmetries in spatial-attentional functions should be measured not only in task-relevant dimensions but also in task-irrelevant dimensions because the latter may reveal biases in very young children not typically observed in task-relevant measures.
Cross-modal influences on attentional asymmetries: Additive effects of attentional orienting and arousal
2017, Neuropsychologia
Citation Excerpt :
Baseline response asymmetry scores were used to separate participants into left- (n =37) and right-responder (n =9) groups. The proportion of right-responders (19%) in our sample was well within the range of previous reports (between 5% and 50%; Benwell et al., 2013; Braun and Kirk, 1999; Cowie and Hamil, 1998; Dellatolas et al., 1996; Halligan et al., 1990; Halligan and Marshall, 1993; Jewell and McCourt, 2000; Manning et al., 1990; McCourt, 2001; Szczepanski and Kastner, 2013; Thomas et al., 2016). Intriguingly, the inclusion of left-handers did not increase the number of right-responders.
Attention is asymmetrically distributed across the visual field, such that left side stimuli are more salient, which causes a spatial bias known as pseudoneglect. Although auditory cues can be used to direct visual attention to a location, the influence of auditory distractors on visuospatial asymmetries remains unknown. We examined whether attentional orienting or arousal effects occur when either left or right auditory distractors are presented during the landmark task. We also categorised participants based on the baseline direction of pseudoneglect. Experiment 1 showed a strong attentional orienting effect. A slightly weaker arousal effect was also observed. Interestingly, these effects appear to be additive, such that infrequent right ear distractors rendered leftward biases non-significant. A second experiment, using centralised auditory distractors, was conducted to isolate the role of arousal. A strong arousal effect occurred, which was mediated by baseline direction of pseudoneglect. Left- and right-responders showed parallel decreases in the strength of attentional asymmetries, as biases decreased in the presence of distractors. Importantly, these decreases were not accompanied by an increase in accuracy. We conclude that both attentional orienting and arousal mechanisms contribute to the cross-modal integration of auditory and visual information during visuospatial processing, with the role of attentional orienting being more dominant.
The influence of baseline directional differences in pseudoneglect on distractibility
2016, Cortex
Neurologically normal individuals demonstrate a reliable bias to the left side of space, known as pseudoneglect. The magnitude of this attentional asymmetry varies, depending on factors such as location within the visual field. Prior research has shown that the presence of distractors in the upper visual field increase leftward biases. The current study investigated whether brief distractors in the periphery, which recruit exogenous attention influence the strength of pseudoneglect. In addition, to further investigate the interaction of vertical and horizontal attentional asymmetries, a vertical landmark task with horizontally presented distractors was also performed. Experiment 1 findings illustrated that single visual field distractors led to stronger leftward biases, when compared to dual visual field distractors. Results also indicated that upward biases for vertical lines were unchanged by horizontal distractors. A baseline landmark task was included in Experiment 2 to allow for participants to be separated into left- and right-responder groups. Results showed that upper space distractors increased the magnitude of asymmetries scores depending on the baseline direction. Left-responders showed increased leftward biases and right-responders showed increased rightward biases when distractors were presented in upper space. As in Experiment 1, horizontal distractors did not influence upward biases. Furthermore, horizontal and vertical asymmetries were not correlated in either experiment. The current results demonstrate a novel influence of distractors on individual differences in pseudoneglect, which is consistent with the suggestion that a subset of individuals show reliable rightward biases. This highlights the importance of accounting for baseline attentional asymmetries.
Spatial attention: Differential shifts in pseudoneglect direction with time-on-task and initial bias support the idea of observer subtypes
2013, Neuropsychologia
Asymmetry in human spatial attention has long been documented. In the general population the majority of individuals tend to misbisect horizontal lines to the left of veridical centre. Nonetheless in virtually all previously reported studies on healthy participants, there have been subsets of people displaying rightward biases.
In this study, we report differential time-on task effects depending on participants' initial pseudoneglect bias: participants with an initial left bias in a landmark task (in which they had to judge whether a transection mark appeared closer to the right or left end of a line) showed a significant rightward shift over the course of the experimental session, whereas participants with an initial right bias shifted leftwards.
We argue that these differences in initial biases as well as the differential shifts with time-on task reflect genuine observer subtypes displaying diverging behavioural patterns. These observer subtypes could be driven by differences in brain organisation and/or lateralisation such as varying anatomical pathway asymmetries (Thiebaut de Schotten et al., 2011).
Inter-hemispheric remapping between arm proprioception and vision of the hand is disrupted by single pulse TMS on the left parietal cortex
2013, Brain and Cognition
Citation Excerpt :
This bias is called ‘pseudoneglect’ (Jewell & McCourt, 2000) in comparison with the large rightward bias observed in neglect (Mesulam, 1981). This hemispheric dominance appears early during childhood (Dellatolas, Coutin, & De Agostini, 1996). We obtained somewhat different results that suggest a clear dominance of the visual attention directed towards the effector or the limb positioned in the right hemifield.
Parietal cortical areas are involved in sensori-motor transformations for their respective contralateral hemifield/body. When arms of the subjects are crossed while their gaze is fixed straight ahead, vision of the hand is processed by the hemisphere ipsilateral to the arm position and proprioception of the arm by the contralateral hemisphere. It induces interhemispheric transfer and remapping. Our objective was to investigate whether a single pulse TMS applied to the left parietal cortical area would disturb interhemispheric remapping in a similar case, and would increase a simple reaction time (RT) with respect to a control single pulse TMS applied to the frontal cortical area. Two LED were superimposed and located in front of the subjects on the saggital axis. Subjects were asked to carefully fixate on these LED during each trial. The lighting of the red LED was used as a warning signal. Following the green one was illuminated after a variable delay and served as a go-signal. The hand for the response was determined before the start of each trial. TMS was applied to the left parietal, the left frontal cortical areas, or not applied to the subject. Results revealed that: (1) Irrespective of its location, single pulse TMS induced a non-specific effect similar to a startle reflex and reduced RT substantially (15 ms on average) with respect to a control condition without TMS (mean value = 153 ms). (2) Irrespective of TMS, RT were shorter when the right or the left hand was positioned in the right visual hemi-field (i.e. normal and crossed positions respectively). (3) Finally, RT increased when single pulse TMS was applied to the left parietal area and when hands were crossed irrespective of which hand was used. We concluded that interhemispheric sensori-motor remapping was disrupted by a single pulse TMS that was applied to the left parietal cortex. This effect was also combined with some visual attention directed towards the hand located on the right visual hemi-field.

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^a: G. Dellatolas, Inserm U.169, 16, avenue Paul Vaillant-Couturier, 94807 Villejuif, France.

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Bisection and Perception of Horizontal Lines in Normal Children

Abstract

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Brain and Cognition

Neuropsychologia

Cognitive Brain Research

Cognitive Brain Research

Brain and Cognition

Cortex

Cortex

Cortex

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Brain and Cognition

Neuropsychologia