title: Lateral motion bias associated with reading direction.
abstract: We found that when Americans view ambiguous lateral long-range apparent motion, they exhibit a robust bias to experience leftward movement. In successive experiments, right-handers and left-handers, and left-side drivers from Japan equally manifested this leftward bias. However, bilingual viewers whose first language reads from right to left exhibited no lateral bias. Furthermore, the bilingual sample produced a significant correlation between exposure to English and extent of leftward motion bias. The findings provide strong evidence that reading habits can influence directionality in motion perception.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, CA 94305-2130.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Morikawa
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: McBeath
mesh_terms: D001334:Automobile Driving; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000208:ethnology; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D014481:United States