19. June 2018 : Visual exploration habits of left-to-right readers are more difficult to predict. Why?

New publ.:

Afsari Z, Keshava A, Ossandón JP and König P(2018). Interindividual differences among native right-to-left readers and native left-to-right readers during free viewing task. DOI:10.1080/13506285.2018.1473542.Vis Cogn

In a free viewing task, humans differ in the spatial selection of fixation points. Native left-to-right readers tend to have a spatial preference for the left visual field. In comparison, right-to-left readers demonstrate a stronger variation in their visual exploration habits.

Here, Afsari et al. studied four factors that might affect these interindividual differences such as age, gender, second language proficiency and the age when the subjects acquired their second language.

The results don’t demonstrate any significant effects of these factors on the horizontal spatial bias. The hypothesis suggests that the power of reading direction habit is strong enough to manipulate horizontal spatial bias.