title: Stroke direction asymmetry in figure drawing: influence of handedness and reading/writing habits.
abstract: Recent studies suggest that asymmetries noted in certain nonlinguistic tasks used in laterality research (e.g., facial affect judgment, line bisection) may in part be influenced by prior reading/writing habits. The present study examined the relative influence of reading/writing direction and handedness on the direction of stroke movement in free-hand figure drawing. One hundred twenty right and left handed brain-intact adult readers of scripts with opposing directionality (Hindi vs Urdu) and illiterate controls were observed while drawing a tree, a hand, a house, an arrow, a pencil, and a fish. Right-handers (including right-handed illiterates) and left-to-right readers drew most figures in a left-to-right direction, whereas left handers (including left handed illiterates) and right-to-left readers more often drew the figures from right to left. These results extend previous findings and contribute to a growing body of evidence demonstrating reading scan biases in nonlinguistic perception and production tasks. It would appear that reading/writing habits cannot be ignored as a potential artifact in studies of hemisphere functional asymmetry employing nonlinguistic stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Texas A & M University, College Station 77843-4235, USA. jxv@psyc.tamu.edu
authors.forename: Jyotsna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vaid
authors.forename: Maharaj
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.forename: Tripti
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sakhuja
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Gupta
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D011596:Psychomotor Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011932:Reading; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*