Pseudoneglect and development: Age-related spatial bias in bisection and drawing

The numerous studies on pseudoneglect have generated inconsistent results and disagreement concerning the underlying mechanisms. Most research supports the hypothesis that hemispheric lateralization is the main reason for the persistent leftward bias in spatial tasks. Findings on the influence of reading direction, handedness and participant age are largely contradictory. As a result of brain maturation adults usually perform with significant leftward bias. However, both hemispheric activation and scanning habits exert an influence on space representation, which varies across age groups. Preschoolers, middle school children and adults were tested on the line and word bisection tasks and on house-person-tree drawing tasks. The analysis of their performance produced results consistent with an explanatory account that the direction of the spatial bias shifts leftwards in the course of development.