Representational Pseudoneglect: is this phenomenon only apparent within the presence of perception?
Citation
(2016) Representational Pseudoneglect: is this phenomenon only apparent within the presence of perception?, no. 37.
Abstract
It has been recently shown that individuals demonstrate a leftward bias when recalling visual
information that has been mentally represented, a discovery known as 'representational
pseudoneglect'. However, as there is no evidence to suggest that individuals possess this
leftward asymmetry within memory recall for mental representations of non-visual stimuli, it
has been suggested that representational pseudoneglect may be a result of perceptual biases
rather than biases within working memory. To investigate this, the present experiment
required individuals to create mental representations of 3x4 patterns that were observed or
verbally listened to and were then asked to recall the patterns from memory. Significant
leftward biases were only found within the visual presentations as more accurate responses
were made for the left hand sides of the patterns than the right. However, no lateral biases
were found for recall of the patterns that had been verbally described. This further implies
that representational pseudoneglect may be due to asymmetries within perception and that
therefore leftward biases within memory recall can only be elicited when there is some
degree of visual input involved.