Research report
Reading habits influence aesthetic preference

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Abstract

The aim of the present study was to determine the extent to which aesthetic preference, previously attributed to cerebral dominance, may be determined by reading habits. One hundred and sixty two normal subjects were presented pairs of images, one being the mirror-image of the other, and were asked for their aesthetic preference. Half of the subjects were left-to-right readers (French subjects) and the other half were right-to-left readers (Israeli subjects). We found a significant effect of reading habits on aesthetic preference, with left-to-right readers showing a preference for stimuli with a rightward directionality while right-to-left readers preferred stimuli with a leftward directionality. These findings raise the question of an interaction between cultural factors and cerebral dominance.

Introduction

Clinical and experimental studies conclude that in the great majority of right-handers the left hemisphere is specialized for language-related functions while the right hemisphere is specialized for spatial and manipulative skills [14], [16].

In the field of visual judgement, several studies have shown that either manual preference or sex may have a specific effect when looking at visual stimuli such as faces, pictures or paintings [3], [10], [17], [18], [19].

Similarly, Chemtob and co-workers [4], [24] used a tachistoscopically presentation of simple aesthetic stimuli, to one visual field at a time, to specifically study an eventual visual field advantage for aesthetic preference. Normal subjects were found to differ in their likes and dislikes depending on whether the stimuli were seen in the right visual field (RVF) or in the left visual field (LVF). On the basis on this finding, the investigators inferred that the hemispheres differ in their aesthetic preference.

In the same way, when dextrals look at a front view of a face, they find that the half in the left visual field looks more like a person than the other half [9], [13]. This asymmetry has also been related to the superiority in normals of the LVF (i.e. of the right hemisphere) in face recognition [9], [15], [21].

Aesthetic judgement appears thus to be one of the many aspects of cognitive and emotional processing that is influenced by asymmetric organization of the brain. Apart from the sex effect mentioned above, an effect of manual preference on aesthetic preference has also been found. Using coloured vacation slides, Levy [17] has shown that when a group of right-handers preferred one orientation of a complex picture over its mirror image the center of interest was judged by another group of right-handers to be displaced to the right. Suggesting that asymmetry of hemispheric functioning plays a role in producing such effects, orientation preference of left-handers was unrelated to asymmetry of picture content.

Using mirror-image pairs of landscape photographs and paintings, other studies have confirmed that right-handers exhibit systematic preferences for one orientation of a picture over its mirror image while left-handers on the contrary do not exhibit any striking preference [3], [10], [18], [19].

This pattern of behavior has also been hypothesized to reflect aspects of observers’ neural organization [2], [3], [17], [18], [19]. To explain the fact that right-handed subjects preferred pictures where the center of interest was displaced to the right, Levy [17] proposed that ‘…in viewing pictures, the right visuo-spatially specialized hemisphere is selectively activated producing a bias of attention toward and a psychological weighting of the left side of space. Pictures which correct for this imbalance by having their more important content or greater heaviness on the right are considered […] to be more pleasing’. On the other hand, another hemispheric explanation has been proposed. Beaumont [3] suggested that the right position of the center of interest would attract the subject’s gaze thus leaving most of the picture in the left visual field allowing the right hemisphere to analyse the pictorial information side.

Levy’s hypothesis fits the phenomenological work of Gaffron [12] who proposed that Westerners scan paintings in a consistent fashion, starting in the lower left foreground and sweeping up and to the right in the picture space.Gaffron [12] suggested that this glance path might explain why artists and critics prefer paintings whose areas of interest are shifted to the right of center. Using the wisdom of the day, Gaffron argued that the dominance of the left hemisphere in dextrals would result in an ‘overprocessing’ of the right visual field. The glance curve from left-to-right ‘compensates for this asymmetry […] and permits the most complete, unfalsified impression of the three-dimensional space by the visual space perception’.

But, this left-to-right scanning of pictures may reflect the subject’s reading habits rather than his/her neural organization. As reading habits have been shown to influence the exploration of non-linguistic stimuli [1] as well as visuo-spatial skills [5], [6], [7], [20], [22], [23], [25] we sought to determine the extent to which aesthetic preferences previously attributed to cerebral dominance, may be determined by reading habits. We think that this issue is of importance, because usually, as we have seen, perceptual asymmetries of non linguistic tasks are typically interpreted solely in terms of a cerebral lateralization framework, especially in terms of right hemisphere dominance.

For this purpose we submitted normal left-to-right (French) and right-to-left (Israeli) readers to a visual aesthetic preference task. Subjects were presented pairs of object pictures. The pair constituted a picture of the same object but presented with a left-to-right directionality or with a right-to-left directionality. In addition, we presented pairs of landscape pictures which were located either on the left-half of the page or on the right one.

If only hemispheric factors influence the preference for one directionality over the other one, we should confirm previous results in showing that all subjects whatever their reading habits exhibit a preference for pictures with a left-to-right directionality or located in the right half of the page.

If reading habits also influence the visual aesthetic preference, then the subjects’ preference should differ according their reading habits and we can expect a preference for pictures possessing the same directionality than the subjects’ reading habits.

Concerning the location of the landscape pictures on the page, the same predictions can be drawn. We should observe a preference for the right location for all subjects in case of a preponderance of hemispheric factors or an opposite pattern of results depending on the subject’s reading habits, in case this latter factor is at work in aesthetic preference.

Section snippets

Subjects

One hundred and sixty two subjects accepted to participate in this study. Half of them were French left-to-right readers (n=81) and the remaining half were Israeli right-to-left readers (n=81). Each group was constituted of half male and half female subjects (for French subjects: 41 males, 40 females; for Israeli: 40 males, 41 females). For left-to-right readers, 41 were school children in grade 3 (mean age: 8.51, from 6.11 to 9), and 40 were adults (mean age: 27, from 19 to 35). For

Results

Left-to-right readers differ dramatically from right-to-left readers when asked to indicate their preference between an object picture or its mirror-image. While left-to-right readers clearly prefer pictures with a left-to-right directionality (m=4.39, S.D.=2.21), right-to-left readers prefer pictures with a right-to-left directionality directionality (m=5.18, S.D.=2.16).

This effect of reading habits on aesthetic preference for objects possessing a directionality occurred both for static (F

Discussion

The main finding of the present experiment is an effect of reading habits on aesthetic preference, with subjects preferring the pictures possessing the same directionality as their reading habits.

Previous findings have shown that right-handers prefer pictures with a left-to-right directionality balance [2], [3], [17], [18], [19] but the present results clearly indicate that this is only true for left-to-right readers, while the right-to-left readers exhibit a preference for the opposite

Acknowledgements

Supported by a grant of the Rhône-Alpes Regional Council to the first author. We are grateful to Margalite Gugenheim and Sandrine Ledreux-Herault for their help in running the experiment and to Drs J. Lellouch, G. Delatollas, S. Worsthley and G. Helft for their helpful comments.

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