Script Directionality Affects Depiction of Depth in Representational Drawings

J. VaidSocial et al.:Psychology Lateral Biases 2011inVol. ©2011; Depth Hogrefe Depiction 42(3):241–248 Publishing Original Article Script Directionality Affects Depiction of Depth in Representational Drawings This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. Jyotsna Vaid1, Rebecca Rhodes2, Sumeyra Tosun1, and Zohra Eslami1 1 Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA, 2University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Abstract. This research examined the influence of directional reading/writing habits on the representation of depth in a scene. Participants with English vs. Arabic language backgrounds were asked to represent an imagined scene containing two houses, a “near house” and a “far house.” Nearly all participants drew the near house larger than the far house and drew the near house before drawing the far house. However, significant group differences in spatial strategies and movement biases were noted. Whereas the majority of native English readers drew the near house on the left side of the page and the far house to the right of it, native Arabic readers showed a slight right bias in placement of the near house and tended to place the far house to the left of the near house. This effect of script direction characterized right-handed and left-handed users of each group. Taken together, the findings support a cultural account of asymmetries in representational drawing reflecting biases arising from prolonged experience in reading and writing in a particular direction. Keywords: depth depiction, lateral biases, script directionality, writing habits, manual preference Representational space is not equivalent for the left and right tence illustration (Barrett & Craver-Lemley, 2008; Chatter- side of a picture. The flow of movement, the importance of jee, Maher, & Heilman, 1995), sentence-picture matching different figures in a scene, and even the perceived depth of (Maass & Russo, 2003), and the representation of quantity, the scene may change when a picture is presented with the temporal concepts, or spatial concepts (Tversky, Kugelmass, left-right relations reversed. For example, it has been reported & Winger, 1991). In perceptual exploration tasks, for exam- that objects appearing in the left side of a scene are judged as ple, participants are shown pictures of objects either in an nearer than the same objects appearing on the right side in a unstructured array or arrayed in rows or in a square or trian- mirror reversed display (Adair & Bartley, 1958). Theorists of gle, and they are asked to name the objects (Kugelmass & art have proposed a glance curve, whereby viewers are said Lieblich, 1970; Kugelmass, Lieblich, & Ehrlich, 1972). The to prefer to enter pictorial space from the lower left and move order in which they name the objects is of interest as it reveals upward toward the right (Gaffron, 1950). Empirical support spatial strategies and lateral biases, which may or may not be for this notion is found in studies in which paintings in which the same across groups. Similarly, studies of object drawing the implied movement is rightward are preferred over those are interested in directionality effects in the starting position in which movement is directed to the left (Levy, 1976), and of the drawing, stroke sequencing direction, and object ori- in which participants favor viewing or framing pictures in entation or facing. Finally, studies of sentence illustration re- which the figures are facing rightward (de Agostini & Chok- veal that agents tend to be drawn on one side of the page, ron, 2000; Rhodes, 2010b). whereas the recipients of an action tend to be drawn on the In addition to asymmetries in the perception of or prefer- other side. Many but not all of these tasks have been studied ence for scenes depicting particular spatial arrangements, in a developmental context. Handedness appears to exert a asymmetries have been reported on a range of graphic pro- robust effect on drawing tasks, especially affecting horizontal duction tasks. These include line bisection (Jewell & movement preferences (Braswell & Rosengren, 2002; Dre- McCourt, 2000), letter cancellation, perceptual exploration man, 1974; Lehman & Goodnow, 1975; Lieblich et al., 1975). (Nachshon, 1985), the copying or producing of lines or geo- Cultural variables related to reading/writing experience have metric shapes, and letters presented individually or in arrays also been shown to influence performance on a range of (Lieblich, Ninio, & Kugelmass, 1975), free representational graphic production tasks (Chokron & de Agostini, 1995; drawing of common objects with identifiable fronts, such as Padakannaya, Devi, Zaveria, Chengappa, & Vaid, 2002; vehicles, animals, or tools (Rhodes, 2010a, 2010b; Vaid, Shanon, 1979). Singh, Sakhuja, & Gupta, 2002; Von Sommers, 1984), sen- Although the existence of perceptual and production © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248 DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000068  242 J. Vaid et al.: Lateral Biases in Depth Depiction asymmetries in the viewing and/or depiction of objects involving sentence construction using two pictures (one and scenes is well established, there is not a consensus presented on the left and the other on the right), Chan and on the origins or significance of these asymmetries (e.g., Bergen (2005) found that the picture on the left was se- Chokron, 2002; Vaid, 2011). A prevalent view is that di- lected as the agent most often by English and Chinese rectionality effects in perception and production act as a participants but the picture on the right was selected as kind of moderator variable for cerebral hemisphere dif- the agent by Taiwanese participants more often. ferences (e.g., Alter, 1989; Khetrapal, 2010). Unfortunately, a laterality account has tended to be based largely on studies of speakers of languages that are read or The Present Study written from left to right, thereby confounding left-oriented spatial biases with biases arising from left-to-right read- The above review makes it clear that spatial strategies in a ing/writing habits. Several studies have shown that individ- number of graphic production tasks including scene repre- uals who normally read and write from left to right develop sentation are influenced by reading/writing direction. The This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. spatial biases to orient to the left side of space and follow a present research sought to extend inquiry into reading/writ- This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. left-to-right trajectory in perception and production; by con- ing-related spatial biases in scene representation by consid- trast, right-to-left readers/writers develop a greater facility in ering the representation of a static scene. Previous studies scanning from right to left (Abed, 1991). Importantly, these examining the depiction of actions described in sentences differences have been observed not only in linguistic con- noted limitations in interpreting their findings if the range of texts, where they would be expected, but also in nonlinguistic verbs used is small or if sentences are presented only in active contexts, suggesting that directional scanning effects arising voice (see Altmann et al., 2006; Khetrapal, 2010, for further from reading/writing habits spill over to nonlinguistic do- discussion). These issues are sidestepped in the present study mains. As an example, in a speeded dot-filling task, left-to- since no action is to be depicted. The study simply explores right users perform faster when going from left to right than how individuals represent depth in a scene involving two when going from right to left; right-to-left users show the objects, one of which is near and the other far. opposite pattern (see Fagard & Dahmen, 2003, for data from Whereas there has been a lot of developmental research on a French vs. Tunisian sample; and Vaid, 1998, for data from the study of depth representation, much of it has focused on an English and Hindi vs. Urdu sample). occlusion of objects depicted along a front/behind axis, and According to the hemispheric specialization view of less attention has been directed at examining how depth is the origin of spatial biases, a left hemispatial bias and a depicted in a two dimensional horizontal plane. A study by left-to-right movement preference should exist regardless Mainwaring, Tversky, Ogishi, and Schiano (2003) found that of reading/writing direction. Yet there is mounting sup- when asked to locate a target for an addressee when describing port that when script directionality is directly tested by a simple spatial scene consisting of two objects, both Japanese comparing left-to-right and right-to-left readers in the and American adults showed a preference for using the term same study, it invariably has an effect. Maass and Russo “near” over the terms “far,” “left” or “right.” This would sug- (2003) reported that Italian adults were faster at verifying gest that “near” is a more accessible entity than “far” or “left” whether an action conveyed in a sentence matched the and “right.” The question of interest in the present study was action shown in a drawing when the agent was on the left whether there would be a differential directional bias in the and the action progressed from left to right; by contrast, conceptualization of “near” on a drawing task, such that read- Arabic participants were faster for actions initiated on the ers of left-to-right languages tend to place near objects more right and proceeding leftward. Chan and Bergen (2005) to the left side whereas readers of right-to-left languages asso- reported that English and mainland Chinese readers were ciate “near-ness” with the right side of space. better at remembering stimuli presented in the upper left This question was first addressed in a developmental hand side of a screen whereas Taiwanese participants cross-cultural study by Braine, Schauble, Kugelmass, and (whose reading in Chinese proceeds more from right to Winter (1993), who examined differences in lateral biases left and from top to bottom) showed better recall for stim- in the representation of depth in children’s drawings of uli presented in the upper right-hand side. common objects such as a house, a tree, and an apple. Al- A number of studies have found differences in the spa- though script direction was not the primary focus of their tial enactment of sentences. Dobel, Diesendruck, and study, their results speak to the same issue as ours. Since Bolte (2007) reported that differences in spatial biases in the present study builds on the Braine et al. study, we de- agent placement on a sentence illustration task were scribe this study in some detail. found in adult but not in preschool users of Hebrew vs. German tested respectively in Israel and Germany. Ka- zandjian, Zivotofsky, and Chokron (2010) found differ- Lateral Biases in Representation of Depth: ences between French and Hebrew readers, and Vaid, Braine et al. (1993) Rhodes, and Tosun (2011) found differences in English vs. Arabic readers (see also Altmann, Saleem, Kendall, In the first of three experiments, Braine et al. (1993) tested Heilman, & Gonzales Rothi, 2006). Similarly, on a task two groups of predominantly right-handed American Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248 © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing  J. Vaid et al.: Lateral Biases in Depth Depiction 243 school children. Participants were given booklets in which gation, the present study focused on the performance of the longer axis was the horizontal one, and were asked to adults: Native readers of English were compared with na- draw two houses and two other objects (trees or apples), tive readers of Arabic to determine whether script direction with one item being “near” and the other being “far.” influences the spatial placement and movement trajectory (Other conditions, such as to draw the objects in front and in drawing near and far houses. Second, whereas paper axis behind, yielded similar results to the near/far condition was a potential confound in Braine et al. (U. S. participants and are not reviewed here.) Upon completing each picture, drew on rectangular shaped paper whereas the Israeli par- participants were to indicate which was the near and ticipants drew on a square sheet of paper), in the present which was the far object, and to number them in terms of study both groups were given rectangular frames within which object they drew first and which second. The draw- which to make their response. Third, whereas only a small ings were then analyzed with respect to spatial arrange- number of left-handed LR readers and no left-handed RL ment (whether the near/far objects were aligned horizon- readers were included in Braine et al. (1993), the present tally, vertically, or diagonally), size (whether the near ob- study included a sufficient number of left-handers in each This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. ject was depicted as larger than the far object), drawing script direction group to permit an examination of potential This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. order (whether the near object was drawn first or second), effects of handedness in relation to script direction. and directional sequence (whether the second object was Handedness was included in order to test two previously drawn to the right or to the left of the first object). reported claims associated with handedness in graphic pro- Braine et al. (1993) found that, for horizontal place- duction; one is the body-specificity hypothesis, which as- ments, most participants placed the near object to the left serts that left-handers are more attuned to the left side of of the far one, even among those who were given instruc- space whereas right-handers are more attuned to the right tions in which “far” was mentioned before “near.” The side of space (Casasanto, 2009; see also Ladavas, 1988), vast majority of participants also drew the near house and the other is a neuromuscular hypothesis, according to larger than the far house. Braine et al. replicated these which both right- and left-handers should prefer to make findings in a second experiment, using a different re- outward directed movements of their arms than inward di- sponse measure in which stickers of different sizes were rected movements when drawing (Brown, Knauft, & Ro- to be used to represent the different locations. They found senbaum, 1948; Dreman, 1974). that stickers representing the near item were consistently placed to the lower left of the far item. Thus, the associ- ation of “near” with the left side of space persisted even Rationale and Predictions when there was no need to actually draw the objects. In their third experiment, Braine et al. (1993) tested If experience in reading and writing in a particular direction 187 Hebrew-speaking children and 236 Arabic-speaking influences conceptualization of “near/far,” we would ex- schoolchildren in Israel from preschool through Grade 7, pect English readers to draw the near house on the left side all of whom were right-handed, on the near/far house- of the page and the far house to its right; by contrast, read- drawing task. Participants were given a square sheet of ers of Arabic should be more likely to place the near house paper on which to draw. The results showed a significant to the right of the far house (under the assumption that near difference between the Arabic and the Hebrew readers in houses would be drawn first). If hemispatial and/or motoric the placement of the near house: Arabic readers (with the factors associated with handedness also affect performance exception of the oldest group) were more likely to place on this task, a different pattern of findings may be expected. the near house on the right side of the page whereas He- First, based on motoric factors alone (i.e., a preference brew readers did not show any consistent preference. As for extensor movements over flexor movements), one in the previous studies, the near house was drawn larger might expect a preference among right-handers, regardless than the far house overall. Further, across groups, the of script direction, for a rightward movement sequence in near house tended to be drawn first, although this effect their order of drawing the two houses; that is, they should was somewhat reduced when the order of mention in the draw the second house to the right of the first-drawn house. instructions was “far/near.” A direct comparison with the Similarly, left-handers (regardless of script direction) U. S. data showed that the near house was drawn to the should favor a right-to-left movement direction, resulting left of the far house by American and Israeli children, but in a preference for drawing the second house to the left of to the right of the far house by Arabic children. the first house. Thus, based on biomechanical variables alone, if the near house is drawn first, right-handers should be expected to draw the far house to the right of the near Present Study in Relation to Braine et al. house, whereas left-handers should draw the far house to (1993) the left of the near house. However, if reading/writing di- rectional scanning habits exert a stronger influence than The present research was designed to replicate and extend biomechanical considerations, then left-to-right (LR) read- the Braine et al. study (1993) in the following ways. First, ers – whether right- or left-handed – should show a prefer- whereas Braine et al.’s study was a developmental investi- ence to draw the second house to the right of the first house, © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248  244 J. Vaid et al.: Lateral Biases in Depth Depiction consistent with their left-to-right reading/writing habits. to label each house as “near” or “far.” All participants were Analogously, right-to-left (RL) readers – whether right- or to draw the scene using their dominant hand. They were al- left-handed – should show a preference to draw the second lowed as much time as they needed to draw. house to the left of the first house, consistent with their The relative spatial arrangement of the two houses (di- right-to-left reading/writing habits. agonal vs. vertical) was noted. Diagonal placement was de- Second, if handedness-related effects reflect a prefer- fined, following Braine et al., as one in which the upper ence for left-handers for the left side of space, then one may item was displaced from the lower item by an angle of at expect left-handers in the present study to place the near least 10%. The drawings were also coded in terms of the house to the left, even if they are right-to-left readers; sim- relative placement of the near house with respect to the far ilarly, right-handers may be expected to place the near house, i.e., near house drawn to the left or to the right of house to the right more often, even if they are left-to-right the far house, drawing order, i.e., near house drawn first or readers. second, movement sequence, i.e., second house drawn to the right or to the left of the first house, and size (near house This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. drawn larger or smaller than, or the same size as, the far This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. house). The research assistant who coded the drawings was Method not aware of the purpose of the study. A subset of the draw- ings were coded independently by a second coder as well Participants and intercoder reliability was over 90%. Two groups of male and female right-handed college students ranging in age from 17 to 21 years were recruited for partic- ipation in the study for course credit. The groups were clas- Results sified on the basis of the directionality of their first learned written language: left to right (English) or right to left (Ara- Sample drawings produced by participants in the LR and bic). The left-to-right (LR) group (n = 198) was tested at a RL groups are provided in the Appendix. large southwestern university in the United States, whereas the RL group (n = 62) was tested at a university in Qatar. Among the LR participants there were 144 right-handers and Order of Placement 54 left-handers; in the RL group there were 52 right-handers and 10 left-handers. Handedness was assessed by means of The vast majority of participants drew the near house first and the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971). Par- then the far house. This was the case for 82.41% of LR right- ticipants also completed a language background question- handers who got the near/far instructions, 87% of LR left- naire. On the basis of the latter, it was determined that LR handers, 89.36% of RL right-handers, and 90% of RL left- readers were native English users. Although many of them handers. A χ² analysis performed on the LR readers showed had studied a second language in school, that language also no effect of handedness. Similarly, there was no effect of had a LR directionality. RL readers had studied English for a handedness in the RL readers. Nor was there a significant mean of 9.86 years and rated themselves as fairly proficient; difference between LR and RL readers, considered separately however, their first learned language and the primary lan- by handedness, in the order of drawing the near house. guage of early schooling was Arabic, which was also the To see if the wording of the instructions could have con- main language of the environment. tributed to the pattern of results, LR right-handers who were given “far/near” instructions were examined separately. The majority of these participants drew the near house first, de- Procedure spite having heard the word “far” first (74.47%; n = 47). A statistical test between the near/far and the far/near LR par- Participants first completed the language background and ticipants showed no significant difference in the percentage handedness questionnaires. They were then given written in- of those who drew the near house first (z-ratio = –1.1, p = .27). structions (in English and Arabic, respectively, for the LR and Thus, order of mention of “near” and “far” does not account RL participants). All participants were instructed to imagine for the preference to draw the near house first. looking at two houses, one that was near and the other far. Instructions for all but a subset of participants were worded such that the word “near” preceded the word “far.” In a sam- Relative Size of Near and Far Houses ple of 47 right-handed LR readers, instructions were given in which the word “far” preceded the word “near.” Participants The majority of participants, regardless of handedness or were to draw the two houses on an unlined sheet of paper in script direction, drew near houses larger than far houses. This which the long axis was horizontal. Upon completing their was the case for 94.8% of LR right-handers, 100% of LR drawing, participants were to indicate, by writing “1” or “2,” left-handers, 89.4% of RL right-handers, and 70% of RL left- which house they drew first and which they drew second, and handers. The remainder of participants in each group either Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248 © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing  J. Vaid et al.: Lateral Biases in Depth Depiction 245 drew the two houses the same size (4.1% of LR right-handers A 2 × 2 χ² analysis performed on the right-handers’ data and 4.3% of RL right-handers, none of the left-handers) or showed a significant effect of script direction in placement drew the near house smaller than the far house (1% of LR of the near house (χ² = 12.018, p < .001). A similar analysis right-handers, none of the LR left-handers, 6.4% of RL right- performed on the left-handers’ data also revealed a signif- handers, and 30% of RL left-handers). There was no signifi- icant effect of script direction (χ² = 4.199, p < .05). The cant difference between right- and left-handers or between results of a logistic regression (summarized in Table 1) LR and RL readers in the tendency to draw the near house showed that script direction was the only significant pre- larger than the far house. dictor of spatial arrangement of the near house. Handed- ness was not found to be a significant predictor of place- ment. The analysis indicates that a near-left bias is predom- Spatial Arrangement inantly influenced by left-to-right reading/writing habits. In the vast majority of cases, the two houses were drawn in a Table 1. Logistic regression predicting near house place- This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. diagonal rather than in a vertical configuration. Of those ment from script direction and handedness This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. showing a diagonal orientation and excluding the few partic- ipants per group for whom the houses were not labeled by the Predictor B (SE) Wald χ² p Exp (B) participants, the predominant pattern among LR readers was Script direction 1.29(.38) 11.46 <.001 3.65 to place the near house in the lower left of the page and the Handedness –0.18(.71) 0.07 .80 0.83 far house in the upper right side. This pattern characterized Handedness × Script 0.11(.81) 0.02 .89 1.12 75% of the LR right-handers and 73% of the LR left-handers Constant –0.22(.30) 0.55 .46 0.80 (see Figure 1). There was no significant difference in near house placement as a function of handedness. Movement Direction When considering the group of LR right-handers who got the “far/near” instruction order, a preference for placing Among LR readers, the second house was drawn to the the near house to the left was found in 72.34%, suggesting right of the first house in a majority of cases, in 81.1% of that order of mention of “near” and “far” was not a deter- right-handers (binomial z-ratio = 5.8) and in 84% of left- mining factor in the observed spatial placement bias. A di- handers (binomial z-ratio = 4.67). There was no significant rect test of the significance of the difference between two difference as a function of handedness. Among RL readers, independent proportions comparing the proportion of LR the second house was drawn to the right of the first house right-handers who got the far/near instructions with those in 46.5% of right-handers (binomial z-ratio = –0.3, ns) and who got the near/far instructions showed no significant dif- in 55.6% of left-handers (not computable due to a small ference (z-ratio = –0.02, p = .98). sample size). There was no significant difference between Among RL readers, 44.4% of right-handers (binomial right- and left-handed RL readers (see Figure 2). z-ratio = –0.6, ns) and 40% of left-handers (binomial z-ratio A χ² analysis comparing right-handed LR vs. RL readers = –0.32, ns) placed the near house to the left. There was no showed a significant effect of script direction (χ² = 16.564, difference between right- and left-handers. p < .0001). A similar analysis performed with left-handers also showed a significant effect of script direction (χ² = 3.809, p < .05). Finally, a logistic regression analysis (see Table 2) showed that script direction was the only signifi- cant predictor of movement direction. Handedness did not predict movement direction. Thus, movement trajectory on this task was largely influenced by script directionality rather than by biomechanical factors associated with right- vs. left-hand use. Figure 1. Percent depiction of “near house” to the left of the “far house” as a function of script direction and hand- Figure 2. Percent depiction of second drawn house to the edness. right of the first drawn house. © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248  246 J. Vaid et al.: Lateral Biases in Depth Depiction Table 2. Logistic regression predicting movement sequence left-to-right reading/writing direction. There was no differ- in house drawing from script direction and hand- ence between right- and left-handed RL readers either. edness The logistic regression analyses confirmed that spatial biases in the positioning of the two houses and in move- Predictor B (SE) Wald χ² p Exp (B) ment direction were significantly influenced by script di- Script direction 1.60(.41) 15.36 <.0001 4.94 rection and that there was no effect of hand use-related Handedness 0.36(.74) 0.24 .62 1.44 biomechanical principles that have otherwise been shown Handedness × Script –0.16(.88) 0.03 .85 0.85 to affect graphic production. Constant –0.14(.31) 0.21 .65 0.87 Limitations Discussion It is possible that a more fine-grained analysis both of hand- This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. This study sought to determine whether “near” and “far” are edness (assessing degree of handedness, for example) and of This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. associated with particular sides of the drawing space and spatial positioning of each house (assessing degree of dis- whether depictions of spatial relations between objects are placement to the left or the right) may have uncovered evi- influenced by script directionality and/or manual preference. dence for subtle effects of handedness not evident in the pre- It was hypothesized that left-to-right reading/writing experi- sent analyses. Further research on this issue should also in- ence would foster an association of “near” with the left side clude a larger sample of left-handers, particularly in the RL of space, and a preference to move in a left-to-right direction group (the present study had only 10 left-handed RL readers), when drawing the two houses, whereas right-to-left read- as this would give confidence that the lack of handedness ing/writing experience was hypothesized to foster an associ- effects in the present study was not due to sample size alone. ation of “near” with the right side of space and favor a right- to-left movement direction. Our findings show strong support for the first part of the hypothesis, as “near” was very clearly Conclusion and Implications associated with the left side of space in LR readers, and a strong left-to-right movement bias was observed in LR read- Our study found a strong and consistent effect of read- ers. However, among RL readers there was not a preference ing/writing direction on both spatial arrangement and for the right side of space when positioning the near house. movement direction. No differences were obtained be- Nor was there a preference for movement in a particular di- tween right- and left-handed users of either language. For rection. Instead, RL readers did not show a spatial bias or a native readers of English, “near” was conceptualized as be- movement bias. Even so, they were statistically less likely ing in the left hemispace, whereas “far” was conceptualized than LR readers to show a left positioning bias and a left-to- as being in the upper right hemispace. That this effect was right movement bias. The relative lack of a right spatial bias not due simply to the order in which participants heard the or a right-to-left movement bias in the RL readers may indi- words “near” and “far” was shown by the finding that par- cate either that RL reading/writing habits are less robust than ticipants who received “far” before “near” in the instruc- LR reading/writing habits or, more likely, that the RL readers tions still showed a strong preference to place the “near” were being influenced somewhat by their knowledge of an house to the left of the “far” house. This preference was LR script, namely, English. Previous studies have found that not shared by readers whose dominant language was read bidirectional reading/writing experience in RL readers serves and written from right to left. These participants tended to to weaken scanning biases relative to those characterizing show a more varied pattern, with some placing the near monodirectional LR or RL users (Kugelmass & Lieblich, house to the right of the far house, and others showing no 1979; Singh, Vaid, & Sakhuja, 2000). bias in either direction. It is suggested that this more varied We had also hypothesized a role of handedness in spatial and weaker effect on the part of RL users may in part reflect positioning and movement direction. Based on previous the fact that they were actually bidirectional readers. findings that extensor movements are preferred over flexor Taken as a whole, the present findings indicate that the movements, we speculated that right-handers would prefer direction of reading/writing affects the graphic representa- to move in a left-to-right direction and left-handers would tion of depth. Nearness is strongly associated with the left move in a right-to-left direction in their sequence of draw- side of space in left-to-right readers, in both right- and left- ing the two houses. This was not found. Instead, movement handers. Script experience also predicted the direction of sequence was influenced primarily by script direction. drawing the two houses; LR readers (whether right- or left- Moreover, there was no support for the notion that left handed) proceeded in a left-to-right direction when draw- handedness might somehow lead to a greater weighting of ing the two houses whereas RL readers (right- and left- the left side of space, and thus, perhaps, a greater tendency handers) did not show a left-to-right movement preference. to place near houses to the left side, as compared to place- These findings support and extend previous develop- ment by right-handers. Instead, the performance of both mental findings of spatial strategies in depth representation right- and left-handed LR readers was consistent with a reported by Braine et al. (1993) and further demonstrate Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248 © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing  J. Vaid et al.: Lateral Biases in Depth Depiction 247 that script directionality overrides any effects that may of positioning reactions as a function of their direction and extent. have been expected due to handedness. The present find- American Journal of Psychology, 61, 167–182. ings are consistent with other studies that show script di- Casasanto, D. (2009). Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and rectionality effects in object framing, and in the facing and bad in right- and left-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychol- sequencing of drawings of an array of figures, such as three ogy, 138, 351–367. Chan, T. T., & Bergen, B. (2005). Writing direction influences spa- fish swimming together (Vaid et al., 2011). They are also tial cognition. In B. Bara, L. W. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli consistent with findings of script directionality effects in (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cogni- the visualization and spatial arrangement of agents and pa- tive Science Society (pp. 412–417). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. tients in a sentence (Chan & Bergen, 2005; Dobel et al., Chatterjee, A., Maher, L., & Heilman, K. (1995). Spatial character- 2007; Maass & Russo, 2003). Finally, the findings are con- istics of thematic role representation. Neuropsychologia, 33, sistent with a growing number of studies that demonstrate 643–648. an effect of reading/writing habits on such different tasks Chokron, S. (2002). On the origin of free-viewing perceptual asym- as aesthetic preference (De Agostini & Chokron, 2000; metries. Cortex, 38, 109–112. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Rhodes, 2010a), the perception of a mental time line (Fuhr- Chokron, S., & de Agostini, M. (1995). Reading habits and line This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. man & Boroditsky, 2007), and preference for particular bisection: A developmental approach. Cognitive Brain Research, movement trajectories in sports (Maass, Pagani, & Berta, 3(1), 51–58. 2007). Taken together, this body of work indicates that, far De Agostini, M., & Chokron, S. (2000). Reading habits influence from being an artifact, the wide-ranging and robust influ- aesthetic preference. Cognitive Brain Research, 10(1–2), 45–49. ence of reading/writing direction is one of the clearest ex- Dobel, C., Diesendruck, G., & Bolte, J. (2007). How writing systems and age influence spatial representations of actions. Psychologi- amples to date of embodied cognition effects. cal Science, 18, 487–491. Dreman, S. B. (1974). Directionality trends as a function of handed- ness and of reading and writing habits. American Journal of Psy- Acknowledgments chology, 87, 247–253. Fagard, J., & Dahmen, R. (2003). The effects of reading-writing A preliminary report of this study was presented as a poster direction on the asymmetry of space perception and directional at the 2010 meeting of the Association for Psychological Sci- tendencies: A comparison between French and Tunisian chil- ence, Boston, MA. We are grateful to Chaitra Rao for collect- dren. Laterality, 8, 39–52. ing pilot data on this task from Urdu readers. We thank Hsin Fuhrman, O., & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Mental time lines follow Chin Chen, Molly Duffy, Sophia Haq, Belem Lopez, and writing direction: Comparing English and Hebrew speakers. In Eleazar Montes for assistance in data collection and coding, D. S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Mary Abdou Nader for translation of test instructions and Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society materials into Arabic, and Dr. Chris McManus and an anon- (pp. 1007–1010). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. ymous reviewer for comments on a previous version. Gaffron, M. (1950). Right and left in pictures. The Art Quarterly, 13, 312–331. Jewell, G., & McCourt, M. E. (2000). Pseudoneglect: A review and meta-analysis of performance factors in line bisection tasks. Neu- References ropsychologia, 38, 93–110. Kazandjian, S., Zivotofsky, A., & Chokron, S. (2010, September). Abed, F. (1991). Cultural influences on visual scanning patterns. Effect of language environment on the spatial action representa- Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 22, 525–534. tion of phrases in bilingual-bidirectional readers. Poster present- Adair, H., & Bartley, S. H. (1958). 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Nachshon, I. (1985). Directional preferences in perception of visual This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. and reading/writing habits. Brain and Cognition, 48, 597–602. stimuli. International Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 161–174. Von Sommers, P. (1984). Drawing and cognition: Descriptive and Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: experimental studies of graphic production processes. New The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113. York: Cambridge University Press. Padakannaya, P., Devi, M. L., Zaveria, B., Chengappa, S., & Vaid, J. (2002). Directional scanning effect and strength of reading habit in picture naming and recall. Brain and Cognition, 48, Received May 9, 2010 484–490. Final revision received February 22, 2011 Rhodes, R. (2010a). Handedness and script directionality in relation Accepted February 23, 2011 to graphic production, perception, and esthetic preference of vis- ual stimuli. Undergraduate honors thesis, Texas A & M Univer- sity. Rhodes, R. (2010b). The “right way”. Explorations: Journal of Un- Jyotsna Vaid dergraduate Research, Texas A & M University, 2, 31–33. Shanon, B. (1979). Graphological patterns as a function of handed- Department of Psychology ness and culture. Neuropsychologia, 17, 457–465. Texas A & M University Singh, M., Vaid, J., & Sahuja, T. (2000). Reading/writing vs. hand- College Station, TX 77843-4235 edness influences on line length estimation. Brain and Cognition, USA 43, 398–402. E-mail jvaid@tamu.edu Appendix A: Sample Drawings by American Participants (LR group) Appendix B: Sample Drawings by Arabic Participants (RL group) Social Psychology 2011; Vol. 42(3):241–248 © 2011 Hogrefe Publishing