Description
Horizontal line bisection is a traditional task for the diagnosis of spatial neglect, and the study of spatial attention in healthy participants. The participant is asked to mark the middle of a horizontal line, and their deviation from the true midpoint is taken as the index of performance (bisection error). The task is simple, and sensitive to spatial neglect, and yet it is surprisingly unclear what underlying abilities this task measures. I have proposed an alternative analysis of the line bisection task, which focuses not on bisection error but on the relative influence (weighting) of the left and right endpoint positions in determining the response. This analysis suggests that what the task really measures is the precision with which locations on the left and right side are represented. I will present supporting evidence from brain-damaged and healthy participants, and from computational modelling of their performance. I will argue that a fuller understanding of line bisection may allow us to move beyond the traditional task, and replace it with something better designed to tap into the core cognitive asymmetry of spatial neglect.| Period | 4 Jun 2024 |
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| Held at | Dipartimento di Psicologia, University Sapienza, Rome, Italy |
| Degree of Recognition | International |