How Different Reading Habits Influence Lines, Words and Pseudowords Bisection: Evidence from Italian and Hebrew

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 length s 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 i n the magnitude and direction of the bias in bisecting verbal and nonverbal material.