Looking up improves performance in verbal tasks

ABSTRACT

Earlier research suggested that gaze direction has an impact on cognitive processing. It is likely that horizontal gaze direction increases activation in specific areas of the contralateral cerebral hemisphere. Consistent with the lateralization of memory functions, we previously showed that shifting gaze to the left improves visuo-spatial short-term memory. In the current study, we investigated the effect of unilateral gaze on verbal processing. We expected better performance with gaze directed to the right because language is lateralized in the left hemisphere. Also, an advantage of gaze directed upward was expected because local processing and object recognition are facilitated in the upper visual field. Observers directed their gaze at one of the corners of the computer screen while they performed lexical decision, grammatical gender and semantic discrimination tasks. Contrary to expectations, we did not observe performance differences between gaze directed to the left or right, which is consistent with the inconsistent literature on horizontal asymmetries with verbal tasks. However, RTs were shorter when observers looked at words in the upper compared to the lower part of the screen, suggesting that looking upwards enhances verbal processing.

KEYWORDS:

• Hemispheric asymmetries
• gaze direction
• unilateral gaze
• verbal memory
• short-term memory

Acknowledgements

CC and DK were supported by the Swiss National Foundation 100014_156487. We wish to thank Linda Amrar, Alina Miny, Elsa Gogniat and Vera Bignoli for helping with data collection and Julie Franck for thoughtful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Christophe Carlei http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3084-8593

Additional information

Funding

CC and DK were supported by the Swiss National Foundation [grant number 100014_156487].