title: Right visual field advantage for perceived contrast: correlation with an auditory bias and handedness.
abstract: Studies have suggested that supramodal attentional resources are biased rightward due to asymmetric spatial fields of the two hemispheres. This bias has been observed especially in right-handed subjects. We presented left and right-handed subjects with brief uniform grey visual stimuli in either the left or right visual hemifield. Consistent with the proposed asymmetry in attentional resources, right-handed subjects estimated right hemifield targets as having a higher contrast than physically identical stimuli presented in the left hemifield. Left-handed participants did not show a systematic rightward or leftward bias. However, the group of left-handed participants also took part in a dichotic listening experiment whose results showed that visual bias score correlated positively with ear-advantage in dichotic listening. Our results are consistent with the view that supramodal processing resources are biased towards the right hemispace, and that this bias is influenced by handedness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland. hmrail@utu.fi
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Railo
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tallus
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hämäläinen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*