Free-viewing perceptual asymmetries for the judgement of brightness, numerosity and size

Perceptual asymmetries under free-viewing conditions were investigated in 24 normal dextral adults. Three tasks were administered that required participants to chose between a pair of left/right reversed stimuli on the basis of their brightness, numerosity or size. These stimulus features were represented asymmetrically within the stimuli, so that each stimulus appeared darker, larger or more numerous on the left or right sides. Participants more often selected the stimulus with the relevant feature on the left-hand side for all three tasks. Response times for leftward responses were faster than rightward responses. Split-half reliabilities revealed a high level of consistency within the tasks. However, the correlation between tasks was low. These results suggest that the different tasks, while showing similar levels of perceptual asymmetry, engage distinct sets of lateralised processes.