d. Each task was preluded by the researcher asking the subject to bisect the line in front of them either visually or tactually. As with the above studies, no corrections were allowed, however, in the tactile condition, subjects could pass their finger over the stimuli as many times as needed to make a decision for bisection. Bisections occurred en bloc, in a single session. Individual conditions were presented all at once, but in a pseudo-random order chosen by the researcher. Testing occurred in a windowless room with ceiling lamp illumination.Line bisection errors were measured to the nearest 1mm, and were recorded as distance from the true midpoint. Bisections proximal to midpoint were arbitrarily given negative values, whereas, bisections distal to the midpoint were given positive values.Participants were debriefed by way of verbal explanation and written information (see Appendix E). The researcher also gave subjects the opportunity to ask any questions they may have had at the time, they were also advised to contact the researcher at any later point in time, should further questions arise.ResultsLine bisection errors (LBE) were measured to the nearest millimeter from the true midpoint. Demarcations away from the body, or with far peripersonal bias from center, were arbitrarily assigned a positive value. Demarcations towards the body, or with near peripersonal bias, were assigned a negative value. In each condition, data for each subject was pooled and given a mean LBE. An overall mean LBE was calculated per subject and per gender, as was the mean LBE per trial (above eye level, below eye level) per subject, and per gender. Further, the mean LBE per modality (visual, tactile) was calculated per subject, and per gender. The standard deviation for each mean LBE was also calculated. All raw data and calculations were tabulated in Table 1. Individual mean LBE overall were higher for women than men (see Figure 1). The m...
