interpret objects at a distance, whereas, touch is used to detect and interpret objects which are relatively close to the body. Historically, visual and tactile attention have been studied along a left-right horizontal axis (Shelton, Bowers, & Heilman, 1990 as cited in Geldmacher & Heilman, 1994); however, there has been a recent expansion of this research, into the vertical and radial axes. The current study will attempt to confirm the findings of Geldmacher and Heilman (1994), Jeerakathil and Kirk (1994), and Drain and Reuter-Lorenz (1996) that below eye level bisection stimuli will be biased away from the body (far peripersonal space) in the visual mode, and towards the body (near peripersonal space) in the tactile mode. Above eye level bisections should not be significantly biased, however, due to a cancellation of biases –i.e., the object centered bias nullifies body centered bias. Drain and Reuter-Lorenz (1996) are one of the only research teams to have considered gender as a factor in the results of such studies. They concluded that although gender does contribute to real sex differences, it is not a significant factor in assessing attentional bias in normal subjects on line bisection tasks, due to the minuteness of these differences. However, given the common perception that males are superior to females in tasks of visuo-spatial dexterity (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974, Caplan, MacPherson, & Tobin, 1985, Newcombe & Dubas, 1992, all as cited in Dworetzky, 1996), it should be a natural to examine the results of men vis--vis women. Thus, in the spirit of gender equality and the pursuit of confirming such a hypothesis, the current study will include gender as a factor of analysis.In 1994, Geldmacher and Heilman studied 10 normal subjects in radial line bisection tasks. That is, they had participants determine where the middles of lines were, when the lines ran outward from the subjects’ bodies, on a horizontal plane....
