title: Visual field asymmetries in object individuation.
abstract: Repetition blindness (RB) is a failure to detect both instances of two identical stimuli presented in close temporal proximity. It is due to an inability to form separate episodic tokens for a repeated stimulus, resulting in a single conscious representation. In three experiments, participants identified two targets presented simultaneously in different spatial locations. These stimuli were either the same or different. In two experiments the targets occurred on either side of fixation, and in a third experiment both were in the same hemifield. In all experiments, RB was more pronounced for stimuli in the right hemifield. In addition, there was a left hemifield advantage for both repeated and non-repeated stimuli when the two stimuli occurred in opposite visual fields and, thus, were processed by different hemispheres. These findings suggest that the right hemisphere plays a dominant role in attentional selection and in creating conscious representations of visual events.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia. Electronic address: irina.harris@sydney.edu.au.
authors.forename: Irina M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Cara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Sally
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Andrews
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Hemispheric asymmetry; Repetition blindness; Token individuation; Visual extinction