How directional change in reading/writing habits relates to directional change in displayed pictures

ABSTRACT

It has been suggested that reading/writing habits may influence the appreciation of pictures. For example, people who read and write in a rightward direction have an aesthetic preference for pictures that face rightward over pictures that face leftward, and vice versa. However, correlations for this phenomenon have only been found in cross-cultural studies. Will a directional change in reading/writing habits within a culture relate to changes in picture preference? Korea is a good place to research this question because the country underwent gradual changes in reading/writing direction habits, from leftward to rightward, during the 20th century. In this study, we analyzed the direction of drawings and photos published in the two oldest newspapers in Korea from 1920–2013. The results show that the direction of the drawings underwent a clear shift from the left to the right, but the direction of the photos did not change. This finding suggests a close psychological link between the habits of reading/writing and drawing that cannot be accounted for simply by an accidental correspondence across different cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Reading/writing direction
• Lateral organization
• Directional preference
• Biomechanical constraint
• Perceptual consideration

Acknowledgement

We appreciate Seoul National University library, Korea University library, Sungkyunkwan University library, and Yonsei University library, for collecting the data. Daehyun Ryu, Jiho Yoo, Jihyun Hwang and Hojoo Lee helped to collect the part of the data. We would like to thank Chris McManus and an anonymous reviewer for valuable suggestions on the earlier draft of the manuscript and their encouragement to our study. Manila Vannucci recommended us to submit the paper to the journal, Laterality.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.