Head and body space to left and right, front and rear--II. Visuotactual and kinesthetic studies and left-side underestimation.
We report seven experiments involving unimanual or bimanual tactual or visuotactual judgments with horizontally or vertically disposed rods, performed in left or right hemispace, in the context of Bowers and Heilman's (Neuropsychologia 18, 491-498, 1980) hemispace hypothesis. We were only able to weakly confirm their finding of a left hemispace superiority, though either hand was more accurate when in its own hemispace. However, their observation of a left pseudoneglect phenomenon was supported and extended: we found that the left hand underestimates relative to the right, and that there may be left hemispace underestimation which is lost with 90 degree head turns, when horizontal extents are underestimated in the direction of the head turn.
D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology; D006257:Head; D006801:Humans; D007699:Kinesthesis; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*