TITLE:
How Different Reading Habits Influence Lines, Words and Pseudowords Bisection: Evidence from Italian and Hebrew
AUTHORS:
Chiara Valeria Marinelli, Lisa S Arduino, Inbar L Trinczer, Naama Friedmann
KEYWORDS:
Line and Word Bisection, Reading Habits, Hebrew-Speaking Vs. Italian Speaking
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.10 No.15,
December
23,
2019
ABSTRACT: When young adult readers bisect a visually presented
line, they generally posit the subjective midpoint to the left of the objective
one, a phenomenon called pseudoneglect. This phenomenon also pertains to orthographic material (words,
pseudowords, consonant strings) and recently it has been shown that stimulus
length may affect the bisection of lines and orthographic material differently:
whereas lines are always bisected leftward, orthographic material is sensitive
to length showing an opposite rightward bisection bias only with short stimuli.
Pseudoneglect is generally ascribed to two main factors: cerebral asymmetries
in visuo-spatial tasks and reading habits. To investigate this issue, 46 adults with different directional reading habits (Italian and
Hebrew-speaking) were asked to bisect lines, words, and pseudowords of
different lengths in both languages. Stimuli were presented on the screen of a tablet
computer and the participants marked the target midpoint with their forefinger.
The results showed that reading habits have an important role in the magnitude and direction of the bias in bisecting verbal and
nonverbal material.