Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Laterality. 2012;17(2):180-201. doi: 10.1080/1357650X.2010.551128. Epub 2011 Jul 7.
Acquiring information about our environment through touch is vital in everyday life. Yet very little literature exists about factors that may influence haptic or tactile processing. Recent neuroimaging studies have reported haptic laterality effects that parallel those reported in the visual literature. With the use of a haptic variant of the classical line bisection task, the present study aimed to determine the presence of laterality effects on a behavioural level. Specifically, three handedness groups including strong dextrals, strong sinistrals, and-the to-date largely neglected group of-mixed-handers were examined in their ability to accurately bisect stimuli constructed from corrugated board strips of various lengths. Stimulus factors known to play a role in visuospatial perception including stimulus location, the hand used for bisection, and direction of exploration were systematically varied through pseudo-randomisation. Similar to the visual domain, stimulus location and length as well as participants' handedness and the hand used for bisection exerted a significant influence on participants' estimate of the centre of haptically explored stimuli. However, these effects differed qualitatively from those described for the visual domain, and the factor direction of exploration did not exert any significant effect. This indicates that laterality effects reported on a neural level are sufficiently pronounced to result in measurable behavioural effects. The results, first, add to laterality effects reported for the visual and auditory domain, second, are in line with supramodal spatial processing and third, provide additional evidence to a conceptualisation of pseudoneglect and neglect as signs of hemispheric attentional asymmetries.
通过触摸获取环境信息在日常生活中至关重要。然而，关于可能影响触觉或触觉加工的因素的文献很少。最近的神经影像学研究报告了触觉的偏侧化效应，与视觉文献中报告的效应相似。本研究使用触觉变体的经典线二分任务，旨在确定行为水平上是否存在偏侧化效应。具体来说，检查了三个惯用手群体，包括强右利手、强左利手和迄今为止在很大程度上被忽视的混合利手群体，以确定他们准确分割由不同长度的瓦楞纸板条构建的刺激的能力。通过伪随机化系统地改变了已知在视空间感知中起作用的刺激因素，包括刺激位置、用于分割的手和探索方向。类似于视觉领域，刺激位置和长度以及参与者的惯用手和用于分割的手对手指触觉探索刺激的中心的估计产生了显著影响。然而，这些影响与视觉领域描述的影响在性质上有所不同，并且探索方向的因素没有产生任何显著影响。这表明，在神经水平上报告的偏侧化效应足以产生可测量的行为效应。结果首先增加了视觉和听觉领域报告的偏侧化效应，其次与超模式空间处理一致，第三为将伪忽视和忽视视为半球注意不对称的迹象提供了额外的证据。
