Reading habits and line bisection: a developmental approach

Abstract

120 normal right-handed subjects, children and adults, with opposite reading habits (60 French, left-to-right readers, 60 Israeli, right-to-left readers) and 60 pre-school children (30 French and 30 Israeli), were submitted to a visuo-motor bisection task. Bisection is found to be dependent upon reading habits with a leftward deviation of the subjective middle for left-to-right readers, and a rightward bias for right-to-left readers. Even before formal reading learning, French and Israeli pre-school children differ significantly in bisecting a line. Results are discussed with respect to hemispheric activation theories and directional hypotheses.