Gaze data of 4243 participants shows link between leftward and superior attention biases and age

Strauch, Christoph; Hoogerbrugge, Alex J.; Ten Brink, Antonia F. · 2024 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1007/s00221-024-06823-w

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Summary

This study investigates how spatial attention biases—specifically leftward (pseudoneglect) and superior (altitudinal pseudoneglect) biases—change with age. While these biases are thought to reflect neural asymmetries, previous research has yielded inconsistent results regarding their age-related modulation, likely due to insensitive measures, small sample sizes, and a focus on extreme age groups. To address these limitations, the authors analyzed free-viewing gaze data from 4,243 participants aged 5 to 65 years, providing a quasi-continuous assessment of attention biases across the lifespan. The researchers re-analyzed data from a museum installation where participants viewed a single image for 10 seconds while their eye movements were tracked. The analysis focused on the first nine fixations to maximize statistical power and included participants with at least nine fixations. Gaze biases were calculated relative to the screen center for both horizontal and vertical dimensions. To account for unequal age group sizes, the authors employed Spearman correlations and a bootstrapping control analysis involving 10,000 iterations to ensure robustness against sampling biases. The results demonstrated that attention biases shifted significantly with increasing age. Horizontal gaze position became more rightward (less leftward) for fixations three through seven, with the strongest correlation observed at the third fixation ($r = 0.43$). Vertical gaze position became more superior for fixations one through six, peaking at the third fixation with a strong effect size ($r = 0.79$). No significant age-related modulations were found for later fixations (eight and nine). These findings indicate that age modulates attention primarily during the initial orienting phase to a novel stimulus, rather than during sustained viewing. The authors conclude that the observed shifts support the hypothesis that cerebral asymmetries develop and change with age, consistent with models suggesting faster right-hemisphere aging and reduced hemispheric asymmetry in older adults. The restriction of effects to early fixations suggests that horizontal and vertical attention biases are primarily driven by attentional orienting mechanisms rather than global spatial attention. The study highlights the utility of gaze data for assessing attention biases free from response biases and suggests that neuropsychological testing should consider age-matched controls and focus on early viewing periods to accurately detect changes in spatial attention.

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• attention allocation