Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 31, Issue 1, January 1993, Pages 39-49
Neuropsychologia

Line bisection errors in visual neglect: Misguided action or size distortion?

https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(93)90079-FGet rights and content

Abstract

The rightward line bisection errors made by patients with visuospatial neglect can be explained as due to a spatially misdirected response, which would be predicted on either of two accounts. An alternative view, however, is that such patients actually mispercieve the left half of a horizontal line as being shorter than the right half. We have tested this possibility directly in three neglect patients, by giving them prebisected lines: they were found to judge a central transection mark as lying nearer to the left end of the lines. We were also able to test one of the patients on a series of size comparisons using computer-generated patterns. She was found to judge horizontal lines as shorter in the left half of visual space than in the right. This was also true for comparisons of the areas of nonsense figures. However she did not make such constant errors when comparing the lengths of vertical lines. It is suggested that an attentional deficit in left hemispace may result in the underestimation of horizontal extent. This would act in combination with misdirected reaching to determine the magnitude of line bisection errors.

References (16)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (240)

  • Unilateral spatial neglect

    2021, Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience: Second Edition
  • The role of the right posterior parietal cortex in prism adaptation and its aftereffects

    2021, Neuropsychologia
    Citation Excerpt :

    The reduction of the leftward proprioceptive and visuo-proprioceptive AEs after rTMS to the right PPC concerns a directional effect that is related to the improvement of left USN in right brain-damaged patients, in whom leftward AEs after adaptation to rightward displacing prims predict a greater improvement of USN (Fortis et al., 2010). In line with the present findings of a rightward effect in the AEs after rTMS to the right PPC, rTMS delivered to the right PPC in healthy participants (Ricci et al., 2012) brings about a rightward neglect-like directional error in line bisection, as assessed by the Landmark task (Milner et al., 1993), a task that involves a judgement about the length of the two halves of a pre-bisected segment. During this neglect-like behavior, fMRI shows decreased neural activity in parieto-frontal areas (Ricci et al., 2012), which are often lesioned or dysfunctional in patients with left USN (Vallar and Calzolari, 2018).

  • The reliability of pseudoneglect is task dependent

    2020, Neuropsychologia
    Citation Excerpt :

    Alongside this, the findings in the present study also suggest that there are individual differences in response across tasks, emphasising the need to assess individual differences in bisection error. The present study used three different bisection tasks typically used to assess biases in spatial attention: the landmark (Harvey et al., 1995; Milner et al., 1993), line bisection (Axenfeld, 1915) and tactile rod bisection (Bowers and Heilman, 1980). Based on hypotheses on the origins of pseudoneglect (Heilman and Van Den Abell, 1979; Kinsbourne, 1970), we expected high reliability of response within individuals across modality.

  • Parkinson's disease may reduce sensitivity to visual-tactile asynchrony irrespective of dopaminergic treatment: Evidence from the rubber hand illusion

    2020, Parkinsonism and Related Disorders
    Citation Excerpt :

    All subjects were asked to complete a questionnaire detecting previous experience of abnormal body ownership [6]. Furthermore, spatial attention was assessed by two bedside tests of neglect: The letter cancellation task [20] and the Milner landmark task [21], as described in the literature [22]. The subject was seated at a table in front of two wooden boxes (both 30 cm × 20 cm × 10 cm) attached to each other on the long side, with large openings on the four narrow sides [22].

View all citing articles on Scopus
§

Formerly M. Brechmann.

View full text