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Effect of a visual distractor on line bisection

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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that a flanking distractor produces a spatial bias during line bisection. In the present study, we investigated whether that bias depends on perceptual or motor components. Participants were asked to bisect a horizontal line, or to reach towards a dot, with or without vision of their hand. The line and the target could be flanked by a distractor. Movement trajectories and endpoints were consistently deviated away from the location of the distractor in the bisection task, but not in the reaching task, irrespectively of whether the participants had online visual feedback from their moving hand. It is suggested that flanking distractors influence perceptual localization of the subjective mid-point during line bisection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli, Via Costantinopoli 16, 80138, Naples, Italy

    Sergio Chieffi & Marcellino Monda

  2. Unità Operativa Complessa di Neurologia, Ospedale CTO, AORN “Ospedali dei Colli”, Naples, Italy

    Alessandro Iavarone

  3. Dipartimento Studi delle Istituzioni e dei Sistemi Territoriali, Università di Napoli “Parthenope”, Naples, Italy

    Andrea Viggiano

  4. Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Sergio Carlomagno

Authors
  1. Sergio Chieffi
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  2. Alessandro Iavarone
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  3. Andrea Viggiano
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  4. Marcellino Monda
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  5. Sergio Carlomagno
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Correspondence to Sergio Chieffi.

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Chieffi, S., Iavarone, A., Viggiano, A. et al. Effect of a visual distractor on line bisection. Exp Brain Res 219, 489–498 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3106-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3106-8

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