Gazing left, gazing right: exploring a spatial bias in social attention

Faces oriented rightwards are sometimes perceived as more dominant than faces oriented leftwards. In this study, we explored whether faces oriented rightwards can also elicit increased attentional orienting. Participants completed a discrimination task in which they were asked to discriminate, by means of a keypress, a peripheral target. At the same time, a task-irrelevant face oriented leftwards or rightwards appeared at the centre of the screen. The results showed that, while for faces oriented rightwards targets appearing on the right were responded to faster as compared to targets appearing on the left, for faces oriented leftwards no differences emerged between left and right targets. Furthermore, we also found a negative correlation between the magnitude of the orienting response elicited by the faces oriented leftwards and the level of conservatism of the participants. Overall, these findings provide evidence for the existence of a spatial bias reflected in social orienting.

When she is Standing Left, she Might be Blamed. Responsibility Attribution for Sexualized Violence Moderated by Rape Myth Acceptance and Benevolent Sexism

The present research contributes to the literature on victim blaming in cases of sexualized violence. Our findings show that even subtle cues, such as positioning in a picture, can influence blame attribution, particularly for people who are motivated to do so. In our experimental study we could show that with increasing rape myth acceptance as well as with increasing benevolent sexism, participants assigned more responsibility for later occurring sexualized violence to a woman displayed on the left-hand side compared to a woman displayed on the right-hand side of a picture.

Reading/writing direction as a source of directional bias in spatial cognition: Possible mechanisms and scope

Becoming literate has been argued to have a range of social, economic and psychological effects. Less examined is the extent to which repercussions of becoming literate may vary as a function of writing system variation. A salient way in which writing systems differ is in their directionality. Recent studies have claimed that directional biases in a variety of spatial domains are attributable to reading and writing direction. This claim is the focus of the present paper, which considers the scope and possible mechanisms underlying script directionality effects in spatial cognition, with particular attention to domains with real-world relevance. Three questions are addressed: (1) What are possible mediating and moderator variables relevant to script directionality effects in spatial cognition? (2) Does script directionality exert a fixed or a malleable effect? and (3) How can script directionality effects be appropriately tested? After discussing these questions in the context of specific studies, we highlight general methodological issues in this literature and provide recommendations for the design of future research.

Abstract concepts: external influences, internal constraints, and methodological issues

There is a longstanding and widely held misconception about the relative remoteness of abstract concepts from concrete experiences. This review examines the current evidence for external influences and internal constraints on the processing, representation, and use of abstract concepts, like truth, friendship, and number. We highlight the theoretical benefit of distinguishing between grounded and embodied cognition and then ask which roles do perception, action, language, and social interaction play in acquiring, representing and using abstract concepts. By reviewing several studies, we show that they are, against the accepted definition, not detached from perception and action. Focussing on magnitude-related concepts, we also discuss evidence for cultural influences on abstract knowledge and explore how internal processes such as inner speech, metacognition, and inner bodily signals (interoception) influence the acquisition and retrieval of abstract knowledge. Finally, we discuss some methodological developments. Specifically, we focus on the importance of studies that investigate the time course of conceptual processing and we argue that, because of the paramount role of sociality for abstract concepts, new methods are necessary to study concepts in interactive situations. We conclude that bodily, linguistic, and social constraints provide important theoretical limitations for our theories of conceptual knowledge.

Two Cultural Processing Asymmetries Drive Spatial Attention

Cultural routines, such as reading and writing direction (script direction), channel attention orientation. Depending on one's native language habit, attention is biased from left-to-right (LR) or from right-to-left (RL). Here, we further document this bias, as it interacts with the spatial directionality that grounds time concepts. We used a spatial cueing task to test whether script direction and the grounding of time in Portuguese (LR, Exp. 1) and Arabic (RL, Exp. 2) shape visuomotor performance in target discrimination. Temporal words (e.g., tomorrow, yesterday) were presented as cues in two modalities: visual (Exp. 1-2) and auditory (Exp. 1). Gaze movement (Exp. 1) and speed of discrimination decisions (Exp. 1-2) of targets presented to the left or right sides of the screen were assessed. As predicted, the interaction between target location and time concepts was significant across both modalities and linguistic communities. Additionally, LR participants detected the target on the right side of the screen faster after a future word than the target on the left side of the screen after a past word cue. In contrast, RL participants detected the target on the left side of the screen faster when the cue word was a future word than the target on the right side of the screen cued by a past word. In both modalities, the initial eye-gaze movement (Exp. 1) was responsive to the cue's time referent, further confirming that time orients attention. An additional bias was observed for the first fixation onset, which landed earlier on the target set that matched habitualized spatial routines. We conclude that scanning regularities are shaped by writing habits and bodily grounded categorical features.

The Effect of Simultaneously Presented Words and Auditory Tones on Visuomotor Performance

The experiment reported here used a variation of the spatial cueing task to examine the effects of unimodal and bimodal attention-orienting primes on target identification latencies and eye gaze movements. The primes were a nonspatial auditory tone and words known to drive attention consistent with the dominant writing and reading direction, as well as introducing a semantic, temporal bias (past-future) on the horizontal dimension. As expected, past-related (visual) word primes gave rise to shorter response latencies on the left hemifield and future-related words on the right. This congruency effect was differentiated by an asymmetric performance on the right space following future words and driven by the left-to-right trajectory of scanning habits that facilitated search times and eye gaze movements to lateralized targets. Auditory tone prime alone acted as an alarm signal, boosting visual search and reducing response latencies. Bimodal priming, i.e., temporal visual words paired with the auditory tone, impaired performance by delaying visual attention and response times relative to the unimodal visual word condition. We conclude that bimodal primes were no more effective in capturing participants' spatial attention than the unimodal auditory and visual primes. Their contribution to the literature on multisensory integration is discussed.

From Which Direction Does the Empire Strike (Back)?

In cultures with left-right-script, agentic behavior is mentally represented as following a left-to-right trajectory, an effect referred to as the Spatial Agency Bias (SAB, Suitner and Maass, 2016). In this research, we investigated whether spatial representations of activities are universal across activities by analyzing the opposite concepts of “attack” and “defense”. Both behaviors involve similar actions (e.g., fighting) but may differ in perceived agency. Moreover “defense” is necessarily always a response to an attack and may therefore be represented by a trajectory in the opposite direction. Two studies found the classic SAB for activities representing attacking but a reduction (Study 1) and reversal (Study 2) for activities involving defense. Although the spatial representation of defense on the right was much weaker and less unequivocal than that of attack on the left, the results suggest that the spatial representations of defense and attack are located in different positions. Apparently not all actors and all activities are spatially represented on the left with a left-to-right trajectory but position and direction depend on the perceived agency. Directions for future research and applications of our findings are discussed.

The Spatial Ingroup Bias: Ingroup Teams Are Positioned Where Writing Starts

In four studies, we test the hypothesis that people, asked to envisage interactions between an ingroup and an outgroup, tend to spatially represent the ingroup where writing starts (e.g., left in Italian) and as acting along script direction. Using soccer as a highly competitive intergroup setting, in Study 1 (N = 100) Italian soccer fans were found to envisage their team on the left side of a horizontal soccer field, hence playing rightward. Studies 2a and 2b (N = 219 Italian and N = 200 English speakers) replicate this finding, regardless of whether the own team was stronger or weaker than the rival team. Study 3 (N = 67 Italian and N = 67 Arabic speakers) illustrates the cultural underpinnings of the Spatial Intergroup Bias, showing a rightward ingroup bias for Italian speakers and a leftward ingroup bias for Arabic speakers. Findings are discussed in relation to how space is deployed to symbolically express ingroup favoritism (Spatial Ingroup Bias) versus shared stereotypes (Spatial Agency Bias).

The Brain’s Asymmetric Frequency Tuning: Asymmetric Behavior Originates from Asymmetric Perception

To construct a coherent multi-modal percept, vertebrate brains extract low-level features (such as spatial and temporal frequencies) from incoming sensory signals. However, because frequency processing is lateralized with the right hemisphere favouring low frequencies while the left favours higher frequencies, this introduces asymmetries between the hemispheres. Here, we describe how this lateralization shapes the development of several cognitive domains, ranging from visuo-spatial and numerical cognition to language, social cognition, and even aesthetic appreciation, and leads to the emergence of asymmetries in behaviour. We discuss the neuropsychological and educational implications of these emergent asymmetries and suggest future research approaches.

Asymmetric practices of reading and writing shape visuospatial attention and discrimination

Movement is generally conceived of as unfolding laterally in the writing direction that one is socialized into. In ‘Western’ languages, this is a left-to-right bias contributing to an imbalance in how attention is distributed across space. We propose that the rightward attentional bias exercises an additional unidirectional influence on discrimination performance thus shaping the congruency effect typically observed in Posner-inspired cueing tasks. In two studies, we test whether faces averted laterally serve as attention orienting cues and generate differences in both target discrimination latencies and gaze movements across left and right hemifields. Results systematically show that right-facing faces (i.e. aligned with the script direction) give rise to an advantage for cue-target pairs pertaining to the right (versus left) side of space. We report an asymmetry between congruent conditions in the form of right-sided facilitation for: (a) response time in discrimination decisions (experiment 1–2) and (b) eye-gaze movements, namely earlier onset to first fixation in the respective region of interest (experiment 2). Left and front facing cues generated virtually equal exploration patterns, confirming that the latter did not prime any directionality. These findings demonstrate that visuospatial attention and consequent discrimination are highly dependent on the asymmetric practices of reading and writing.

Weight estimations with time-reversed point-light displays

Interpreting other’s actions is a very important ability not only in social life, but also in interactive sports. Previous experiments have demonstrated good estimation performances for the weight of lifted objects through point-light displays. The basis for these performances is commonly assigned to the concept of motor simulation regarding observed actions. In this study, we investigated the weak version of the motor simulation hypothesis which claims that the goal of an observed action strongly influences its understanding (Fogassi, Ferrari, Gesierich, Rozzi, Chersi, & Rizzolatti, 2005). Therefore, we conducted a weight judgement task with point-light displays and showed participants videos of a model lifting and lowering three different weights. The experimental manipulation consisted of a goal change of these actions by showing the videos normal and in a time-reversed order of sequence. The results show a systematic overestimation of weights for time-reversed lowering actions (thus looking like lifting actions) while weight estimations for time-reversed lifting actions did not differ from the original playback direction. The results are discussed in terms of motor simulation and different kinematic profiles of the presented actions.

A purely power-space association without spatial and strategic biases

Previous studies have shown that powerful and powerless concepts are metaphorically associated with top and bottom spaces respectively. However, this association might be contaminated by spatial and strategic biases due to the involvement of spatialized stimuli or responses. It is unknown whether power by itself can automatically activate spatial representations. To eliminate spatial and strategic biases, Experiment 1 separately presented power and spatial stimuli at the center of the screen, and participants had to classify power words and HIGH/LOW labels (Experiment 1a) or indicate up/down arrows (Experiment 1b) using a single key and follow different response rules that were combined with a Go/no-go task. Experiment 2 replicated the non-spatialized design but used an implicit power judgment task. Based upon the non-spatialized method, the results provide the first evidence that a power-space association effect still exists when eliminating spatial and strategic biases, revealing the nonconscious spatial nature of power.

Social Inferences From Faces as a Function of the Left-to-Right Movement Continuum

We examined whether reading and writing habits known to drive agency perception also shape the attribution of other agency-related traits, particularly for faces oriented congruently with script direction (i.e., left-to-right). Participants rated front-oriented, left-oriented and right-oriented faces on 14 dimensions. These ratings were first reduced to two dimensions, which were further confirmed with a new sample: power and social-warmth. Both dimensions were systematically affected by head orientation. Right-oriented faces generated a stronger endorsement of the power dimension (e.g., agency, dominance), and, to a lesser extent, of the social-warmth dimension, relative to the left and frontal-oriented faces. A further interaction between the head orientation of the faces and their gender revealed that front-facing females, relative to front-facing males, were attributed higher social-warmth scores, or communal traits (e.g., valence, warmth). These results carry implications for the representation of people in space particularly in marketing and political contexts. Face stimuli and respective norming data are available at www.osf.io/v5jpd.

Assessing the presence of face biases by means of anorthoscopic perception

Anorthoscopy is a presentation mode in which an image is shown sliding behind a slit-shaped aperture, so that it is visible only part by part and never in its entirety. With the aims to assess (1) whether the processing of complex stimuli (faces) correctly occurs in anorthoscopy, and (2) whether the Own-Gender Bias (OGB: the better recognition of stimuli belonging to the same gender of the observer: faster and more accurate) and the Left-Face Bias (LFB: the preference to analyze the left half of the face) occur in such a part by part presentation, we presented female and male faces as whole stimuli (Experiment 1) and in anorthoscopy (Experiments 2 and 3), as well as female/male chimeric faces (Experiment 4), during a gender categorization task. Experiment 1 confirmed that participants correctly categorized the gender of faces, but the OGB was not found. In Experiments 2 and 3 we manipulated the direction (Experiment 2: upward/downward; Experiment 3: leftward/rightward), the speed (slow and fast) of the sliding faces, and the width of the aperture (small and large). Both tasks revealed that facial gender was correctly categorized in anorthoscopy. The OGB was found, but only for males/females in Experiments 2/3, respectively. In Experiment 4 the LFB emerged only in the tachistoscopic session, suggesting that this perceptual bias does not extend to anorthoscopy.

Sources of Directional Spatial Biases in Hemi-Image Drawing

We examined the performance of right- and left-handed brain-intact adult readers of English or Farsi on a hemi-image generation task in which participants were to imagine and then draw halves of objects using either their dominant or nondominant hand. Which half of the object was drawn was examined in relation to biomechanical, cerebral laterality, and cultural predictors. Findings showed a differential side bias as a function of reading/writing direction and hand used to draw. Specifically, when the dominant hand was used to draw (Experiment 1), English left-handers produced more left hemi-images while Farsi right-handers produced more right hemi-images. Body specificity associated with hand used, however, drove spatial preference when enlisting the nondominant hand (Experiment 2) with English right-handers now showing a significant left hemi-image bias and English left-handers showing a right hemi-image bias. Farsi right-handers using their nondominant hand did not show a significant bias in either direction. Taken together, the findings suggest a joint influence of handedness and reading/writing direction, aligned with an embodiment account of directional spatial biases.

The influence of encoding and testing directions on retrieval of spatial information in explored and described environments

The verbal descriptions of an environment elicit a spatial mental model, in which the linear disposition of the described objects might be related to the properties of the description. In particular the direction from which the environment is encoded might shape the spatial mental model, as a consequence of a cultural bias in reading and writing direction. The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of the direction in which objects are encoded on the retrieval of spatial information. In two experiments we asked participants to encode an environment through either physical exploration or verbal description, that are encoding modalities which preserve the sequential presentation of spatial information. We manipulated both the encoding and testing directions of the spatial information, and tested participants by using a two-alternative forced choice task. In both experiments, the results did not reveal any significant effect, disconfirming the idea of the left-right cultural bias for western people for this type of task. The lack of effect suggests that encoding an environment through physical movement and verbal descriptions determines the development of a mental representation which is relatively independent from encoding sequential order.

Grammar, Gender and Demonstratives in Lateralized Imagery for Sentences

We investigated biases in the organization of imagery by asking participants to make stick-figure drawings of sentences containing a man, a woman and a transitive action (e.g. she kisses that guy). Previous findings show that prominent features of meaning and sentence structure are placed to the left in drawings, according to reading direction (e.g. Stroustrup and Wallentin in Lang Cogn 10(2):193-207, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2017.19 ). Five hundred thirty participants listened to sentences in Danish and made eight drawings each. We replicated three findings: (1) that the first mentioned element is placed to the left more often, (2) that the agent in the sentence is placed to the left, and (3) that the grammatical subject is placed to the left of the object. We further tested hypotheses related to deixis and gender stereotypes. By adding demonstratives (e.g. Danish equivalents of this and that), that have been found to indicate attentional prominence, we tested the hypothesis that this is also translated into a left-ward bias in the produced drawings. We were unable to find support for this hypothesis. Analyses of gender biases tested the presence of a gender identification and a gender stereotype effect. According to the identification hypothesis, participants should attribute prominence to their own gender and draw it to the left, and according to the stereotype effect participants should be more prone to draw the male character to the left, regardless of own gender. We were not able to find significant support for either of the two gender effects. The combination of replications and null-findings suggest that the left-ward bias in the drawing experiment might be narrowly tied to left-to-right distribution in written language and less to overall prominence. No effect of handedness was observed.

Scanning of speechless comics changes spatial biases in mental model construction

The mental representation of both time and number shows lateral spatial biases, which can be affected by habitual reading and writing direction. However, this effect is in place before children begin to read. One potential early cause is the experiences of looking at picture books together with a carer, as those images also follow the directionality of the script. What is the underlying mechanism for this effect? In the present study, we test the possibility that such experiences induce spatial biases in mental model construction, a mechanism which is a good candidate to induce the biases observed with numbers and times. We presented a speechless comic in either standard (left-to-right) or mirror-reversed (right-to-left) form to adult Spanish participants. We then asked them to draw the scene depicted by sentences like 'the square is between the cross and the circle'. The position of the lateral objects in these drawings reveals the spatial biases at work when building mental models in working memory. Under conditions of highly consistent directionality, the mirror comic changed pre-existing lateral biases. Processes of mental model construction in working memory stand as a potential mechanism for the generation of spatial biases for time and number.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

Describing Events: Changes in Eye Movements and Language Production Due to Visual and Conceptual Properties of Scenes

How can a visual environment shape our utterances? A variety of visual and conceptual factors appear to affect sentence production, such as the visual cueing of patients or agents, their position relative to one another, and their animacy. These factors have previously been studied in isolation, leaving the question about their interplay open. The present study brings them together to examine systematic variations in eye movements, speech initiation and voice selection in descriptions of visual scenes. A sample of 44 native speakers of German were asked to describe depicted event scenes presented on a computer screen, while both their utterances and eye movements were recorded. Participants were instructed to produce one-sentence descriptions. The pictures depicted scenes with animate agents and either animate or inanimate patients who were situated to the right or to the left of agents. Half of the patients were preceded by a visual cue - a small circle appearing for 60 ms on a blank screen in the place of patients. The results show that scenes with left- rather than right-positioned patients lead to longer speech onset times, a higher probability of passive sentences and looks toward the patient. In addition, scenes with animate patients received more looks and elicited more passive utterances than scenes with inanimate patients. Visual cueing did not produce significant changes in speech, even though there were more looks to cued vs. non-cued referents, demonstrating that cueing only impacted initial scene scanning patterns but not speech. Our findings demonstrate that when examined together rather than separately, visual and conceptual factors of event scenes influence different aspects of behavior. In comparison to cueing that only affected eye movements, patient animacy also acted on the syntactic realization of utterances, whereas patient position in addition altered their onset. In terms of time course, visual influences are rather short-lived, while conceptual factors have long-lasting effects.

Lateral biases in aesthetic and spatial location judgments: differences between tasks and native reading directions

People exhibit consistent leftward spatial biases across a variety of tasks. However, individuals with a native reading direction other than left-to-right (LTR) show an attenuation of the leftward bias. The current study used procedurally similar tasks to examine spatial ability and aesthetic preferences in LTR and right-to-left (RTL) groups. In the spatial task participants viewed a centred rectangle partially occluded by an overlapping circle and estimated the centre of the circle with a single mouse click. In the aesthetic task participants used the mouse to control a "virtual flashlight" to light images of abstract paintings in the most aesthetically pleasing way. Contrary to predictions, smaller errors were made for circles on the right and estimations were progressively less accurate as circle size increased in the spatial task. On the aesthetic task, light placements of LTR participants were biased to the left and significantly different from the slightly rightward placements of RTL participants. As predicted, when completing the aesthetics task amounts of time scanning left or right visual space were different between groups. Findings support the theory that directional scanning biases attenuate leftward lateral biases and further, the nature of the visuospatial task may vary the strength of lateral bias.

The first, the least and the last: Spatial asymmetries in memory and their relation to script trajectory

Serial positioning biases are well documented and generally take a U-shaped form, with better memory for first (primacy) and last items (recency). Here, we test the hypothesis that the relative strength of primacy and recency depends on script direction. When presented with large arrays of images, people are expected to first direct attention to the side where they usually start reading (in our case, left among Italian, and right among Arabic speakers) and to then scan the remaining images along the habitual text trajectory. Besides supporting the predicted scanning direction with an eye-tracker methodology, Study 1a (n = 56 Italians) provides evidence for a spatial memory advantage for images positioned to the left. Study 1b (n = 34 Italians) shows that people are aware of the asymmetric scanning and the memory advantage deriving from it. Study 3 (n = 67 Italian and n = 44 Arabic speakers) shows opposite memory biases in the two samples, with best performance for images on the left among Italian and for images on the right among Arabic speakers. Together these studies contribute to the growing literature showing that scanning habits due to script direction exert a subtle influence on basic cognitive processes.

Directionality in Aesthetic Judgments and Performance Evaluation: Sport Judges and Laypeople Compared

Left-to-right readers are assumed to demonstrate a left-to-right bias in aesthetic preferences and performance evaluation. Here we tested the hypothesis that such bias occurs in left-to-right reading laypeople and gymnastic judges (n = 48 each) when asked to select the more beautiful image from a picture pair showing gymnastic or non-gymnastic actions (Experiment 1) and to evaluate videos of gymnasts’ balance beam performances (Experiment 2). Overall, laypeople demonstrated a stronger left-to-right bias than judges. Unlike judges, laypeople rated images with left-to-right trajectory as more beautiful than content-wise identical images with right-to-left trajectory (Experiment 1). Also, laypeople tended to award slightly more points to videos showing left-to-right as opposed to right-to-left oriented actions (Experiment 2); however, in contrast to initial predictions the effect was weak and statistically unreliable. Collectively, judges, when considered as a group, seem less prone to directional bias than laypeople, thus tentatively suggesting that directionality may be an issue for unskilled but not for skilled judging. Possible mechanisms underlying the skill effect in Experiment 1 and the absence of clear bias in Experiment 2 are discussed alongside propositions for a broadening of perspectives in future research.

Heading Right and Judging Harsher

Abstract. The term right may imply different meanings, for example, right can be the direction opposite to left, but right can also mean the opposite of wrong. In three experiments, we investigated whether orientation toward the right versus left direction can influence how individuals judge situational moral transgressions. Mental spatial orientation was manipulated by placing the text of moral transgressions on the left versus right side of the screen (Experiment 1) or by presenting different landscape pictures depicting paths that either lead to the left versus to the right (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 3, we also manipulated participants’ physical spatial orientation. Results confirmed our main prediction that a mental rightward (vs. leftward) orientation can trigger relatively harsher moral judgments.

Is Beauty in the Hand of the Writer? Influences of Aesthetic Preferences through Script Directions, Cultural, and Neurological Factors: A Literature Review

Human experience surrounding the appreciation of beauty is not static. Many factors such as script direction and cultural differences directly impact whether, how and why we consider images beautiful. In an earlier study, Pérez González showed that 19th-century Iranian and Spanish professional photographers manifest lateral biases linked to reading writing direction in their compositions. The present paper aims to provide a general review on this topic and intends to highlight the most relevant studies reporting preferences in the appreciation of beauty in individuals with different reading and writing directions and belonging to different cultural backgrounds.

From Spatial to Social Asymmetry

According to the spatial agency bias model, in Western cultures agentic targets are envisaged as facing and acting rightward, in line with writing direction. In four studies of Italian participants, we examined the symbolic association between agency and the rightward direction (Study 1, N = 96), its spontaneous activation when attributing agency to female and male targets (Study 2, N = 80) or when judging the authenticity of photographs of men and women (Study 3, N = 57), and its possible relation to stereotype endorsement (Study 4, N = 80). In Study 4, we used a conditioning paradigm in which participants learned a counterstereotypical new association; we developed a novel measure to assess the association between gender and spatial direction, namely, the spatial association task. Participants envisaged and cognitively processed male and female targets in line with the spatial agency bias model and reported lower benevolent sexism after learning a new counterstereotypical spatial association. Our findings raise awareness about the biased use of space (and its consequences) in the representation of women and men, so that all people, and especially communicators and policy makers, can actively intervene to promote gender equality. Additional online materials for this article are available to PWQ subscribers on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684316676045

Anticlockwise or clockwise? A dynamic Perception-Action-Laterality model for directionality bias in visuospatial functioning

Orientation bias and directionality bias are two fundamental functional characteristics of the visual system. Reviewing the relevant literature in visual psychophysics and visual neuroscience we propose here a three-stage model of directionality bias in visuospatial functioning. We call this model the 'Perception-Action-Laterality' (PAL) hypothesis. We analyzed the research findings for a wide range of visuospatial tasks, showing that there are two major directionality trends in perceptual preference: clockwise versus anticlockwise. It appears these preferences are combinatorial, such that a majority of people fall in the first category demonstrating a preference for stimuli/objects arranged from left-to-right rather than from right-to-left, while people in the second category show an opposite trend. These perceptual biases can guide sensorimotor integration and action, creating two corresponding turner groups in the population. In support of PAL, we propose another model explaining the origins of the biases - how the neurogenetic factors and the cultural factors interact in a biased competition framework to determine the direction and extent of biases. This dynamic model can explain not only the two major categories of biases in terms of direction and strength, but also the unbiased, unreliably biased or mildly biased cases in visuosptial functioning.

Reading and writing direction effects on the aesthetic appreciation of photographs

Does reading and writing direction (RWD) influence the aesthetic appreciation of photography? Pérez González showed that nineteenth-century Iranian and Spanish professional photographers manifest lateral biases linked to RWD in their compositions. The present study aimed to test whether a population sample showed similar biases. Photographs with left-to-right (L-R) and right-to-left (R-L) directionality were selected from Pérez González's collections and presented in both original and mirror-reversed forms to Spanish (L-R readers) and Moroccan (R-L readers) participants. In Experiment 1, participants rated each picture for its aesthetic pleasingness. The results showed neither effects of lateral organization nor interactions with RWD. In Experiment 2, each picture and its mirror version were presented together and participants chose the one they liked better. Spaniards preferred rightward versions and Moroccans preferred leftward versions. RWD therefore affects aesthetic impressions of photography in our participants when people pay attention to the lateral spatial dimension of pictures. The observed directional aesthetic preferences were not sensitive to the sex of the model in the photographs, failing to support expectations from the hypotheses of emotionality and agency. Preferences were attributable to the interaction between general scanning strategies and scanning habits linked to RWD.

Reading direction causes spatial biases in mental model construction in language understanding

Correlational evidence suggests that the experience of reading and writing in a certain direction is able to induce spatial biases at both low-level perceptuo-motor skills and high-level conceptual representations. However, in order to support a causal relationship, experimental evidence is required. In this study, we asked whether the direction of the script is a sufficiente cause of spatial biases in the mental models that understanders build when listening to language. In order to establish causality, we manipulated the experience of reading a script with different directionalities. Spanish monolinguals read either normal (left-to-right), mirror reversed (right-to-left), rotated downward (up-down), or rotated upward (down-up) texts, and then drew the contents of auditory descriptions such as "the square is between the cross and the triangle". The directionality of the drawings showed that a brief reading experience is enough to cause congruent and very specific spatial biases in mental model construction. However, there were also clear limits to this flexibility: there was a strong overall preference to arrange the models along the horizontal dimension. Spatial preferences when building mental models from language are the results of both short-term and long-term biases.

Accuracy of Outcome Anticipation, But Not Gaze Behavior, Differs Against Left- and Right-Handed Penalties in Team-Handball Goalkeeping

Low perceptual familiarity with relatively rarer left-handed as opposed to more common right-handed individuals may result in athletes' poorer ability to anticipate the former's action intentions. Part of such left-right asymmetry in visual anticipation could be due to an inefficient gaze strategy during confrontation with left-handed individuals. To exemplify, observers may not mirror their gaze when viewing left- vs. right-handed actions but preferentially fixate on an opponent's right body side, irrespective of an opponent's handedness, owing to the predominant exposure to right-handed actions. So far empirical verification of such assumption, however, is lacking. Here we report on an experiment where team-handball goalkeepers' and non-goalkeepers' gaze behavior was recorded while they predicted throw direction of left- and right-handed 7-m penalties shown as videos on a computer monitor. As expected, goalkeepers were considerably more accurate than non-goalkeepers and prediction was better against right- than left-handed penalties. However, there was no indication of differences in gaze measures (i.e., number of fixations, overall and final fixation duration, time-course of horizontal or vertical fixation deviation) as a function of skill group or the penalty-takers' handedness. Findings suggest that inferior anticipation of left-handed compared to right-handed individuals' action intentions may not be associated with misalignment in gaze behavior. Rather, albeit looking similarly, accuracy differences could be due to observers' differential ability of picking up and interpreting the visual information provided by left- vs. right-handed movements.

Is the left hemisphere androcentric? Evidence of the learned categorical perception of gender

Effects of language learning on categorical perception have been detected in multiple domains. We extended the methods of these studies to gender and pitted the predictions of androcentrism theory and the spatial agency bias against each other. Androcentrism is the tendency to take men as the default gender and is socialized through language learning. The spatial agency bias is a tendency to imagine men before women in the left-right axis in the direction of one's written language. We examined how gender-ambiguous faces were categorized as female or male when presented in the left visual fields (LVFs) and right visual fields (RVFs) to 42 native speakers of English. When stimuli were presented in the RVF rather than the LVF, participants (1) applied a lower threshold to categorize stimuli as male and (2) categorized clearly male faces as male more quickly. Both findings support androcentrism theory suggesting that the left hemisphere, which is specialized for language, processes face stimuli as male-by-default more readily than the right hemisphere. Neither finding evidences an effect of writing direction predicted by the spatial agency bias on the categorization of gender-ambiguous faces.

Spatial biases in understanding descriptions of static scenes: the role of reading and writing direction

Prior studies on reasoning tasks have shown lateral spatial biases on mental model construction, which converge with known spatial biases in the mental representation of number, time, and events. The latter have been shown to be related to habitual reading and writing direction. The present study bridges and extends both research strands by looking at the processes of mental model construction in language comprehension and examining how they are influenced by reading and writing direction. Sentences like "the table is between the lamp and the TV" were auditorily presented to groups of mono- and bidirectional readers in languages with left-to-right or right-to-left scripts, and participants were asked to draw the described scene. There was a clear preference for deploying the lateral objects in the direction marked by the script of the input language and some hints of a much smaller effect of the degree of practice with the script. These lateral biases occurred in the context of universal strategies for working memory management.

Dynamic stimuli: accentuating aesthetic preference biases

Despite humans' preference for symmetry, artwork often portrays asymmetrical characteristics that influence the viewer's aesthetic preference for the image. When presented with asymmetrical images, aesthetic preference is often given to images whose content flows from left-to-right and whose mass is located on the right of the image. Cerebral lateralization has been suggested to account for the left-to-right directionality bias; however, the influence of cultural factors, such as scanning habits, on aesthetic preference biases is debated. The current research investigates aesthetic preference for mobile objects and landscapes, as previous research has found contrasting preference for the two image types. Additionally, the current experiment examines the effects of dynamic movement on directionality preference to test the assumption that static images are perceived as aesthetically equivalent to dynamic images. After viewing mirror-imaged pairs of pictures and videos, right-to-left readers failed to show a preference bias, whereas left-to-right readers preferred stimuli with left-to-right directionality regardless of the location of the mass. The directionality bias in both reading groups was accentuated by the videos, but the bias was significantly stronger in left-to-right readers. The findings suggest that scanning habits moderate the leftward bias resulting from hemispheric specialization and that dynamic stimuli further fluent visual processing.

Stepping into a map: initial heading direction influences spatial memory flexibility

Learning a novel environment involves integrating first-person perceptual and motoric experiences with developing knowledge about the overall structure of the surroundings. The present experiments provide insights into the parallel development of these egocentric and allocentric memories by intentionally conflicting body- and world-centered frames of reference during learning, and measuring outcomes via online and offline measures. Results of two experiments demonstrate faster learning and increased memory flexibility following route perspective reading (Experiment 1) and virtual navigation (Experiment 2) when participants begin exploring the environment on a northward (vs. any other direction) allocentric heading. We suggest that learning advantages due to aligning body-centered (left/right/forward/back) with world-centered (NSEW) reference frames are indicative of three features of spatial memory development and representation. First, memories for egocentric and allocentric information develop in parallel during novel environment learning. Second, cognitive maps have a preferred orientation relative to world-centered coordinates. Finally, this preferred orientation corresponds to traditional orientation of physical maps (i.e., north is upward), suggesting strong associations between daily perceptual and motor experiences and the manner in which we preferentially represent spatial knowledge.

Converging modalities ground abstract categories: the case of politics

Three studies are reported examining the grounding of abstract concepts across two modalities (visual and auditory) and their symbolic representation. A comparison of the outcomes across these studies reveals that the symbolic representation of political concepts and their visual and auditory modalities is convergent. In other words, the spatial relationships between specific instances of the political categories are highly overlapping across the symbolic, visual and auditory modalities. These findings suggest that abstract categories display redundancy across modal and amodal representations, and are multimodal.

Seeing the Forest From Left to Right

Everyday actions such as writing have been proven to produce consistent mental schemata, which are used to represent social interactions. The preference for depicting the agent of an action to the left of the recipient is known as the spatial agency bias (SAB) and has been related to writing direction. The question which we addressed through two studies is whether the mental construal level (CL) affects this embodied bias. We hypothesized that high-CL (vs. low-CL) priming increases the SAB, as it promotes the use of an abstract mental schema to represent the situation. We found that, when asked to depict two interacting targets, participants in a high-CL condition were more likely to adopt a left-to-right representation (Studies 1 and 2). In contrast, under low-CL, participants were more likely to follow the trajectory suggested by contextual details (Study 2). These findings shed light on boundary conditions for the SAB.

Unconventional vertical word-order impairs reading

Western written languages unfold across both the horizontal (from left to right) and the vertical (from top to bottom) dimensions. Culturally determined horizontal reading/writing habits are so pervasive that their influence can be found not only in visual scanning but also in performance across different domains and tasks. However, little is known on the effects of vertical word order. In the present study, a lexical decision task is used to show that reading performance is less efficient when verbal material is vertically arranged following a bottom-to-top order.

Script Directionality Affects Depiction of Depth in Representational Drawings

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.

Up and Down, Front and Back

The present study shows how directional movement is related to meaning. We measured the influence of congruent versus incongruent movement – meaning pairings on reaction times in a Stroop-type categorization task. Movement-related words corresponding to the vertical up-down axis (e.g., happiness – grief; successful; to sink) and to the sagittal front-back axis (e.g., tomorrow – yesterday; decisive; to retreat) were coupled with actual movement in the vertical and sagittal axes. The color of the word appearing on a computer screen indicated the movement direction, creating congruent and incongruent movement – meaning trials. Participants reacted faster on congruent trials (e.g., happy – upward movement; decisive – forward movement) than on incongruent trials (e.g., happy – downward movement; decisive – backward movement). Results supported the hypothesized movement – meaning relation for both the vertical and the sagittal dimensions.

Visualizing thought

Depictive expressions of thought predate written language by thousands of years. They have evolved in communities through a kind of informal user testing that has refined them. Analyzing common visual communications reveals consistencies that illuminate how people think as well as guide design; the process can be brought into the laboratory and accelerated. Like language, visual communications abstract and schematize; unlike language, they use properties of the page (e.g., proximity and place: center, horizontal/up-down, vertical/left-right) and the marks on it (e.g., dots, lines, arrows, boxes, blobs, likenesses, symbols) to convey meanings. The visual expressions of these meanings (e.g., individual, category, order, relation, correspondence, continuum, hierarchy) have analogs in language, gesture, and especially in the patterns that are created when people design the world around them, arranging things into piles and rows and hierarchies and arrays, spatial-abstraction-action interconnections termed spractions. The designed world is a diagram.

A sinister bias for calling fouls in soccer

Distinguishing between a fair and unfair tackle in soccer can be difficult. For referees, choosing to call a foul often requires a decision despite some level of ambiguity. We were interested in whether a well documented perceptual-motor bias associated with reading direction influenced foul judgments. Prior studies have shown that readers of left-to-right languages tend to think of prototypical events as unfolding concordantly, from left-to-right in space. It follows that events moving from right-to-left should be perceived as atypical and relatively debased. In an experiment using a go/no-go task and photographs taken from real games, participants made more foul calls for pictures depicting left-moving events compared to pictures depicting right-moving events. These data suggest that two referees watching the same play from distinct vantage points may be differentially predisposed to call a foul.

Disembodying cognition

The idea that concepts are embodied by our motor and sensory systems is popular in current theorizing about cognition. Embodied cognition accounts come in different versions and are often contrasted with a purely symbolic amodal view of cognition. Simulation, or the hypothesis that concepts simulate the sensory and motor experience of real world encounters with instances of those concepts, has been prominent in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Here, with a focus on spatial thought and language, I review some of the evidence cited in support of simulation versions of embodied cognition accounts. While these data are extremely interesting and many of the experiments are elegant, knowing how to best interpret the results is often far from clear. I point out that a quick acceptance of embodied accounts runs the danger of ignoring alternate hypotheses and not scrutinizing neuroscience data critically. I also review recent work from my lab that raises questions about the nature of sensory motor grounding in spatial thought and language. In my view, the question of whether or not cognition is grounded is more fruitfully replaced by questions about gradations in this grounding. A focus on disembodying cognition, or on graded grounding, opens the way to think about how humans abstract. Within neuroscience, I propose that three functional anatomic axes help frame questions about the graded nature of grounded cognition. First, are questions of laterality differences. Do association cortices in both hemispheres instantiate the same kind of sensory or motor information? Second, are questions about ventral dorsal axes. Do neuronal ensembles along this axis shift from conceptual representations of objects to the relationships between objects? Third, are questions about gradients centripetally from sensory and motor cortices towards and within perisylvian cortices. How does sensory and perceptual information become more language-like and then get transformed into language proper?