Lateral biases in spatial attention

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Part 1: Neurologically normal people exhibit very strong and reliable lateral biases in spatial attention. Most people pay more attention to the left side of the object. Similarly, when asked to make judgments of size, numerosity, brightness, colour, or distance, normals usually exhibit leftward biases. The cause of these biases is unknown. It could be because people tend to scan objects from the left to the right (like reading English), or because people pay more attention to the left side of space. It looks like these leftward biases affect people outside of the laboratory too. In the real world, when people collide with stationary objects while walking, they tend to do so with the right side of their body. This suggests that individuals underestimate the proximity of objects to the right. The research proposed in the current proposal is an attempt to determine the conditions under which these biases exist and whether they influence other real world activities, such as driving.