Young adults exhibit a small asymmetry of visuospatial attention that favours the left side of space relative to the right (pseudoneglect). However, it remains unclear whether this leftward bias is maintained, eliminated or shifted rightward in older age. Here we present two meta-analyses that aimed to identify whether adults aged ≥50 years old display a group-level spatial attention bias, as indexed by the line bisection and the landmark tasks. A total of 69 datasets from 65 studies, involving 1654 participants, were analysed. In the meta-analysis of the line bisection task (n = 63), no bias was identified for studies where the mean age was ≥50, but there was a clear leftward bias in a subset where all individual participants were aged ≥50. There was no moderating effect of the participant’s age or sex, line length, line position, nor the presence of left or right cues. There was a small publication bias in favour of reporting rightward biases. Of note, biases were slightly more leftward in studies where participants had been recruited as part of a stand-alone older group, compared to studies where participants were recruited as controls for a clinical study. Similarly, no spatial bias was observed in the meta-analysis of the landmark task, although the number of studies included was small (n = 6). Overall, these results indicate that over 50s maintain a group-level leftward bias on the line bisection task, but more studies are needed to determine whether this bias can be modulated by stimulus- or state-dependent factors.

年轻人表现出视觉空间注意力的小不对称性，相对于右侧（假性忽视）偏向空间的左侧。然而，尚不清楚这种向左的偏见是否在老年人中得到维持、消除或向右转移。在这里，我们提出了两项​​元分析，旨在确定 50 岁以上的成年人是否表现出群体水平的空间注意力偏差，如线平分和里程碑任务所索引。共分析了来自 65 项研究的 69 个数据集，涉及 1654 名参与者。在对线平分任务 ( n = 63)的荟萃分析中，平均年龄≥50 岁的研究没有发现偏倚，但在一个子集中存在明显的左偏个体参与者年龄≥50岁。参与者的年龄或性别、线条长度、线条位置以及左右提示的存在都没有调节作用。有一个小的发表偏见有利于报告右倾偏见。值得注意的是，与招募参与者作为临床研究对照的研究相比，在招募参与者作为独立老年组的一部分的研究中，偏向稍微偏左一些。同样，在里程碑任务的荟萃分析中没有观察到空间偏差，尽管纳入的研究数量很少（n= 6)。总体而言，这些结果表明，超过 50 岁的人在线平分任务上保持群体水平的左偏，但需要更多的研究来确定这种偏向是否可以通过刺激或状态相关因素来调节。