Directional bias in the body while walking through a doorway: its association with attentional and motor factors

Smartphones and rightward collisions

People tend to deviate to the right when walking through a narrow aperture (e.g., a doorway), resulting in a rightward bias in collisions. This study examines the effects of smartphone use on rightward collisions while walking. When pedestrians walk through a narrow aperture, they usually head straight to the perceived centre of the aperture, which is shifted slightly to the right, without updating the estimates. The rightward shift of the perceived centre is attributable to the rightward attentional shift in the extrapersonal space. Pedestrians using smartphones tend to fixate on the phone most of the time and thus tend not to look at their surroundings (i.e., extrapersonal space). Therefore, we predict that smartphone use will reduce rightward collisions. To test this prediction, we used a narrow-doorway task in which participants walked through a narrow doorway either with or without a smartphone. The participants with smartphones used them to perform either verbal or spatial tasks. The number of rightward collisions decreased when the participants used smartphones. The type of task had no effect on the lateral collision biases. These results were interpreted in terms of lateral attentional bias in peripersonal and extrapersonal spaces.

How perception of personal space influence obstacle avoidance during walking: differences between young and older adults

OBJECTIVE

Individuals maintain a spatial margin or 'personal space' between themselves and others. The form of this space and strategies for avoiding obstacles can be influenced by participant characteristics such as age. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of personal space and obstacle avoidance strategies in young and older adults. We also examined differences in perceptual personal space and walking trajectory during obstacle avoidance using a three-dimensional motion capture system. Methods Ten young adults and ten older adults participated in this study. We calculated actual obstacle avoidance trajectory and obstacle avoidance data such as the lateral spatial margin and body rotation angle during walking in a task that included obstacle avoidance. We also measured the perceptual personal space created by approaching a confederate. In order to calculate each personal space and obstacle avoidance data, we used a three-dimensional motion capture system. Two factors (two groups and personal space) of repeated analysis of variance were used in statistical analysis. Results We found no age-related differences in personal space or obstacle avoidance strategy in this study (F = 0.52, p = 0.48). However, we found significant differences in the form of perceptual personal space and personal space formed during obstacle avoidance (F = 11.86, p = 0.0030). Conclusion This study indicates that perceptual personal space did not reflect the walking trajectory created by actual obstacle avoidance. In addition, age did not influence the obstacle avoidance strategy. These results suggest that the perceptual personal space and aging have little effect in the situation of avoiding a single standing pedestrian.

Through Doorways and Down Corridors: Investigating Asymmetries During Computer Maze Navigation

Pseudoneglect causes neurologically intact individuals to bias their attention to the left in near space, and to the right in far space. These attentional asymmetries impact both ambulatory and non-ambulatory activities, causing individuals to deviate rightward. While most studies investigating real-world navigation have found a rightward deviation when passing through a door, some have found the opposite pattern for corridors. To explore this dissociation, the current experiment explicitly compared navigation through doorways and corridors. To allow for a direct comparison between these two environments, the navigation task was undertaken in a simulated environment. Dextral participants (n = 98) completed several trials in either the doorway or corridor condition and their mean lateral position and variance was analysed. A rightward deviation was observed for doorways, consistent with previous research. Rightward biases were also observed for corridors, irrespective of the position within the corridor. The results argue against an explanation based on near/far space for the leftward bias in corridors. An explanation based on elevation of view is proposed as an alternative. The study also demonstrates that simulated environments provide an efficient means of investigating asymmetries in navigation.

Fly on the right: Lateral preferences when choosing aircraft seats

A small preference has been observed for people to choose seats on the left of aircraft when booking via an online system. Although this is consistent with pseudoneglect-the known leftward bias in perception and representation-rightward preferences have been commonly observed in seating selection tasks in other environments. Additionally, the previous research in aircraft seating was unable to dissociate a bias to one side of the screen from a bias to one side of the cabin of the aircraft. Here, we present a study in which participants were asked to select seats for a range of fictional flights. They demonstrated a preference for seats on the right of the cabin, irrespective of whether the right of the cabin appeared to either the right or the left of the screen, a preference for seats towards the front of the aircraft and a preference to favour window and aisle seats. This suggests, in contrast to previous research, that participants demonstrated a rightward lateral bias to representations of an aircraft. These results may have implications for our understanding of asymmetries in cognition as well as having potentially important practical implications for airlines.

An investigation of left/right driving rules on deviations while walking

When traversing through an aperture, such as a doorway, people characteristically deviate towards the right. This rightward deviation can be explained by a rightward attentional bias which leads to rightward bisections in far space. It is also possible, however, that left or right driving practices affect the deviation. To explore this possibility, Australian (left-side drivers) and Swiss (right-side drivers) participants (n = 36 & 34) walked through the middle of an aperture. To control for the sway of the body, participants started with either their left or right foot. Sway had a significant effect on participants' position in the doorway and the amount of sway was greater for Australians-perhaps due to national differences in gait. There was a significant rightward deviation for the Swiss, but not for the Australians. It is suggested that driving practices have a small additive effect on rightward attentional biases whereby the bias is increased for people who drive on the right and reduced in people who drive on the left.

Heading Right and Judging Harsher

Abstract. The term right may imply different meanings, for example, right can be the direction opposite to left, but right can also mean the opposite of wrong. In three experiments, we investigated whether orientation toward the right versus left direction can influence how individuals judge situational moral transgressions. Mental spatial orientation was manipulated by placing the text of moral transgressions on the left versus right side of the screen (Experiment 1) or by presenting different landscape pictures depicting paths that either lead to the left versus to the right (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 3, we also manipulated participants’ physical spatial orientation. Results confirmed our main prediction that a mental rightward (vs. leftward) orientation can trigger relatively harsher moral judgments.

The relationship between spatial cognition and walking trajectory for passing through a doorway: evident in individuals with dominant right eye?

When individuals attempt to walk through the center of a doorway (i.e., spatial bisection), the body's midpoint at crossing can deviate from its true center. Such deviation could result from asymmetry in spatial cognition. However, previous studies failed to find a significant correlation between bisection performance during walking and that during line/spatial bisection. We investigated whether such failure would result from different effectors being used for bisection (i.e., body midpoint or finger/laser pointer). We also investigated whether the difference in an individual's eye dominance would affect the relationship. Thirty-two young adults (16 of them with right-eye dominance) participated. For a walking task, participants walked through the perceived center of a wide doorway. For a spatial bisection task, they observed the same doorway under two distance conditions (about 0.5 and 2 m) and aligned their body midpoint with the perceived center in the sagittal dimension. Both tasks were performed under three visual occlusion conditions (dominant eye, non-dominant eye, and no occlusion). The results showed that, for the spatial bisection task, occluding the dominant eye caused deviation of the bisected point to the contralateral side. However, for the walking task, such an effect was observed only in participants with a dominant right eye. Consequently, directional biases in both tasks were significantly correlated only for right-eye-dominant participants. These results suggest that, for right-eye-dominant individuals only, use of the same effector for both tasks showed a clear relationship between the two tasks. Possible explanations for these findings were discussed.

Visuomotor control of human adaptive locomotion: understanding the anticipatory nature

To maintain balance during locomotion, the central nervous system (CNS) accommodates changes in the constraints of spatial environment (e.g., existence of an obstacle or changes in the surface properties). Locomotion while modifying the basic movement patterns in response to such constraints is referred to as adaptive locomotion. The most powerful means of ensuring balance during adaptive locomotion is to visually perceive the environmental properties at a distance and modify the movement patterns in an anticipatory manner to avoid perturbation altogether. For this reason, visuomotor control of adaptive locomotion is characterized, at least in part, by its anticipatory nature. The purpose of the present article is to review the relevant studies which revealed the anticipatory nature of the visuomotor control of adaptive locomotion. The anticipatory locomotor adjustments for stationary and changeable environment, as well as the spatio-temporal patterns of gaze behavior to support the anticipatory locomotor adjustments are described. Such description will clearly show that anticipatory locomotor adjustments are initiated when an object of interest (e.g., a goal or obstacle) still exists in far space. This review also show that, as a prerequisite of anticipatory locomotor adjustments, environmental properties are accurately perceived from a distance in relation to individual’s action capabilities.

Rule for scaling shoulder rotation angles while walking through apertures

Background

When an individual is trying to fit into a narrow aperture, the amplitude of shoulder rotations in the yaw dimension is well proportioned to the relative aperture width to body width (referred to as the critical ratio value). Based on this fact, it is generally considered that the central nervous system (CNS) determines the amplitudes of shoulder rotations in response to the ratio value. The present study was designed to determine whether the CNS follows another rule in which a minimal spatial margin is created at the aperture passage; this rule is beneficial particularly when spatial requirements for passage (i.e., the minimum passable width) become wider than the body with an external object.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Eight young participants walked through narrow apertures of three widths (ratio value = 0.9, 1.0, and 1.1) while holding one of three horizontal bars (short, 1.5 and 2.5 times the body width). The results showed that the amplitude of rotation angles became smaller for the respective ratio value as the bar increased in length. This was clearly inconsistent with the general hypothesis that predicted the same rotation angles for the same ratio value. Instead, the results were better explained with a new hypothesis which predicted that a smaller rotation angle was sufficient to produce a constant spatial margin as the bar-length increased in length.

Conclusion

The results show that, at least under safe circumstances, the CNS is likely to determine the amplitudes of shoulder rotations to ensure the minimal spatial margin being created at one side of the body at the time of crossing. This was new in that the aperture width subtracted from the width of the body (plus object) was taken into account for the visuomotor control of locomotion through apertures.