Effects of vestibular rotatory accelerations on covert attentional orienting in vision and touch.

Fabrizio Doricchi, Dipartimento di Psicologia 39 - Universita' "La Sapienza" Roma - Fondazione Santa Lucia

Abstract
Using temporal order judgements to pairs of simultaneous or asynchronous stimuli presented in the left and right egocentric space, we evaluated the influence of leftward and rightward vestibular rotatory accelerations on covert attentional orienting. In a first experiment, we presented visual stimuli in the left and right hemifield. In a second experiment, tactile stimuli were presented to hands lying on their anatomical side or in a crossed position across the sagittal body midline. Stimuli were presented while subjects suppressed or did not suppress the vestibulo-ocular response (VOR) evoked by head-body rotation. Independently of VOR suppression, visual and tactile stimuli presented on the side of rotation were judged to precede simultaneous stimuli presented on the side opposite the rotation. When limbs were crossed, attentional facilitatory effects were only observed for stimuli presented to the right hand lying in the left hemispace during leftward rotatory trials with VOR suppression. In a third control experiment we demonstrated that temporal prioritization of stimuli presented on the side of rotation was not determined by response bias linked to spatial compatibility between the directions of rotation and the directional labels used in temporal order judgments (i.e. “left” or “right” first).

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