Open AccessThe Fragility of the Near-Hand Effect
Author(s) -
Jill A. Dosso,
Alan Kingstone
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
collabra. psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.444
H-Index - 10
ISSN - 2474-7394
DOI - 10.1525/collabra.167
Subject(s) - orientation (vector space) , set (abstract data type) , cognitive psychology , visual processing , medicine , computer science , psychology , perception , neuroscience , mathematics , geometry , programming language
Recent literature has demonstrated that hand position can affect visual processing, a set of phenomena termed Near Hand Effects (NHEs). Across four studies we looked for single-hand NHEs on a large screen when participants were asked to discriminate stimuli based on size, colour, and orientation (Study 1), to detect stimuli after a manipulation of hand shaping (Study 2), to detect stimuli after the introduction of a peripheral cue (Study 3), and finally to detect stimuli after a manipulation of screen orientation (Study 4). Each study failed to find a NHE. Further examination of the pooled data using a Bayesian analysis also failed to reveal positive evidence for faster responses or larger cueing effects near a hand. These findings suggest that at least some NHEs may be surprisingly fragile, which dovetails with the recent proposition that NHEs may not form a unitary set of phenomena (Gozli & Deng, 2018). The implication is that visual processing may be less sensitive to hand position across measurement techniques than previously thought, and points to a need for well-powered, methodologically rigorous studies on this topic in the future.