Malkhaz Makashvili ^1,2 *, Lasha Chantadze^2,3 , Lali Kikvadze ¹ , Mikheil Iremashvili ³ and Mariam Kurashvili ³

¹ Ilia State University, Georgia
² I. Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine, Georgia
³ Georgian National University, Georgia

*Corresponding Author:Malkhaz Makashvili, Ilia State University, I. Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine, Georgia.

Received: December 23, 2025; Published: February 23, 2026

Pseudoneglect – the tendency to bias visual attention to the left visual half-field, is attributed to the activity of the right brain hemisphere. At the same time, research data suggest that depression is related to the imbalance between the activity of brain hemispheres affecting the right hemisphere more prominently. However, little is known about the association between the pseudoneglect and depression. To extend this data, we studied the association between scores in Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and the bias of attention to the left versus right visual half-field in the Star cancellation task performance in young adult participants. Of the total of 54 university students, of both sexes, mean age 22.65, left-to-right readers in their native language, 40 participants (74,1%) initially started to cancel the stars from the left side and the mean number of stars cancelled on the left was M = 11.45 (SD = 7.44). The range of scores in BDI-II was 1 to 25. The rest of 14 participants (25,9%) started cancelation from the right and cancelled more targets on the right side (M = 6.10, SD = 6.49). The range of scores in BDI-II was 0 to 23. Spearman’s rank-order correlation was conducted to examine the association between depressive symptoms (BDI-II scores) and performance on the Star Cancellation Test, as indexed by the number of stars cancelled on the left and right sides. A statistically significant, moderate positive correlation was found between BDI-II scores and the number of stars cancelled on the right side, r = .385; p = .006, indicating that higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with a greater number of right-sided cancellations. In contrast, the correlation between BDI-II scores and the number of stars cancelled on the left side was negative and did not reach statistical significance. Findings suggest that depressive symptom severity is more strongly and significantly related to the bias of visual attention to the right visual half-field. In conclusion, the bias of visual attention to the visual half-field expressed in target cancellation task performance is associated with the depressive symptoms, measured by BDI-II. As compared to the leftward visual bias, the bias of visual attention to the right visual half-field is associated with higher level of depressive symptoms.

Keywords: Pseudoneglect; Depression; Right hemisphere; Beck Inventory; Star cancellation

References

Citation

Citation: Malkhaz Makashvili., et al. “Association between the Pseudoneglect and Depression Symptoms in Young Adults". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 10.3 (2026): 24-29.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2026 Malkhaz Makashvili., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.