A Systematic Review on the Interaction between Emotion and Pseudoneglect

Anxiety is not the right choice! Individual differences in trait anxiety modulate biases in pseudoneglect

Pseudoneglect, the tendency to display a leftward perceptual bias, is consistently observed in line bisection tasks. Some studies have shown that pseudoneglect is sensitive to emotions. This emotion-related modulation is likely related to valence-dependent hemispheric lateralization, although the results do not converge. A possible explanation for these inconsistencies could be individual differences in emotional tone. Considering that negative and positive emotions produce different basic activations of the two hemispheres, emotional characteristics of the subjects, such as trait anxiety, could in fact modulate the pseudoneglect phenomenon. To verify this, high- and low-anxiety participants were asked to centrally bisect horizontal lines delimited by neutral or emotional (happy and sad) faces. In line with previous studies, results here showed a decrease in the leftward bisection error in the presence of happy faces, indicating a greater involvement of the left hemisphere in processing positive emotional stimuli. In addition, trait anxiety influenced the magnitude of the visual bias. High-anxiety subjects, compared to low-anxiety subjects, showed a general bias in visual attention toward the left space as a function of emotional valence. Results are discussed within the framework of valence-dependent hemispheric specialization and the relative degree of activation. In sum, our data highlight the relevance of considering emotional individual differences in studying the pseudoneglect phenomenon.

A Comparative Study on Line Bisection and Landmark Task Performance Using a Hybrid Online Setting

Bisection tasks are commonly used to assess biases and asymmetries in visuospatial attention in both patients and neurologically intact individuals. In these tasks, participants are usually asked to identify the midpoint and manually bisect a horizontal line. Typically, healthy individuals tend to show an attention processing advantage for the left visual field, known as “pseudoneglect.” Here, performance at two computerized versions of the task was compared to assess pseudoneglect in neurologically intact individuals. Specifically, we used a hybrid online setting in which subjects (n = 35) performed the online tasks under the video guidance of the experimenter. We measured attentional biases in the line bisection and landmark tasks. We found pseudoneglect in both tasks, although the bias was larger in the line bisection task. Overall, these findings show that hybrid online tasks may provide a valid setting to assess attentional biases and suggest their feasibility in the clinical setting.

Special Issue: “Symmetry in Cognition and Emotion”

The ten contributions of the current Special Issue on “Symmetry in Cognition and Emotion” represent different and original contributions to this topic. The new evidence spans from addressing whether the attentional blink can be elicited by internal events to the role of the fronto-parietal network. The review contributions address the effect of emotion on pseudoneglect and the role of the temporal parietal junction in processing self-related information, respectively. Four contributions provide new evidence on processing different aspects of faces, such as age, gaze, emotional expression, and their effect on response inhibition. Finally, two contributions provide novel evidence on the asymmetric preferences in decisions and on the relation between preferences for visual symmetry, respectively. Taken together, these contributions provide a new insight into the different forms of “Symmetry in Cognition and Emotion”, and we hope they can help to stimulate new research.

All Is Perception

This editorial addresses the universality and importance of the science of perception. In particular, recently published studies in this journal illustrate the natural variations in perception. These articles are a reminder of perception as a natural process with inherent variations and that any two individuals are not guaranteed to form the same representation of an object, regardless of whether it originates from the senses or not. Since perception is a foundation for higher cognition, it also has an immense influence on studies of humanity and interpretations of natural processes.