MEMORY FOR LOCATIONS WITHIN REGIONS - SPATIAL BIASES AND VISUAL HEMIFIELD DIFFERENCES

Memory for location of a dot inside a circle was investigated with the circle in the center of a computer screen (Experiment 1) or with the circle presented in either the left or the right visual field (Experim ent 2). In both experiments, as in Huttenlocher, Hedges, and Duncan's (1991) study, the task was to relocate the dot by marking the remember ed location. When errors in angular and radial estimates were consider ed separately, it was found that, in both experiments, the angular loc ations of estimates of the dots' positions regressed toward different locations inside each quadrant of the circle; the radial locations of the estimates of dots' positions tended to regress toward locations ne ar the circumference. These variations in the direction of bias appear ed to reflect a general shift of estimates toward the upper left are o f the circle. The second experiment replicated the preceding effects b ut also revealed that the regressions within quadrants of angular valu es were stronger after right visual field than after left visual field presentations. We interpret the dissociation between visual fields as evidence that memory for categorical spatial relations (Kosslyn, 1987 ) is more dependent on left-hemisphere than on right-hemisphere proces sing.