Lateral asymmetry of voluntary attention orienting
Braz. j. med. biol. res
; 43(8): 745-758, Aug. 2010. ilus
Article
in En
| LILACS
| ID: lil-554959
Responsible library:
BR1.1
ABSTRACT
We recently demonstrated that automatic attention favors the right side of space and, in the present study, we investigated whether voluntary attention also favors this side. Six reaction time experiments were conducted. In each experiment, 12 new 18-25-year-old male right-handed individuals were tested. In Experiments 1, 2, 3 (a, b) and 4 (a, b), tasks with increasing attentional demands were used. In Experiments 1, 2, 3a, and 4a, attention was oriented to one or both sides by means of a central spatially informative visual cue. A left or right side visual target appeared 100, 300, or 500 ms later. Attentional effects were observed in the four experiments. In Experiments 2, 3a and 4a, these effects were greater when the cue indicated the right side than when it indicated the left side (respectively 16 ± 10 and 44 ± 6 ms, P = 0.015, for stimulus onset asynchrony of 500 ms in Experiment 2; 38 ± 10 and 70 ± 7 ms, P = 0.011, for Experiment 3a, and 23 ± 11 and 61 ± 10 ms, P = 0.009, for Experiment 4a). In Experiments 3b and 4b, the central cue pointed to both sides and was said to be non-relevant for task performance. In these experiments right and left reaction times did not differ. The most conservative interpretation of the present findings is that voluntary attention orienting favors the right side of space, particularly when a difficult task has to be performed.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
LILACS
Main subject:
Orientation
/
Reaction Time
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Attention
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Space Perception
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Functional Laterality
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
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Humans
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Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Braz. j. med. biol. res
Journal subject:
BIOLOGIA
/
MEDICINA
Year:
2010
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Brazil
Publication country:
BR
/
BRASIL
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BRASILE
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BRAZIL
/
BRESIL