Deviating to the right: Using eyetracking to study the role of attention in navigation asymmetries

Abstract

The ability to navigate accurately through the environment and avoid obstacles is essential for effective interactions with the environment. It is therefore surprising that systematic rightward errors are observed when neurologically intact participants navigate through doorways—most likely due to the operation of biases in spatial attention. These rightward errors may arise due to the operation of an extinction-like process, whereby participants overattend to the left doorpost and collide with the right one. Alternatively, rightward biases might reflect a bisection bias, such that the extrapersonal nature of the aperture causes participants to misbisect the aperture slightly to the right of..