Scharine Angelique A, McBeath Michael K
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
Hum Factors. 2002 Summer;44(2):248-56. doi: 10.1518/0018720024497916.
We tested a finding by E. S. Robinson (1933) that people have a bias to turn right upon entering a building. We hypothesized that this bias is attributable to learning derived from traffic rules that specify driving on the right side of the road and that it also could be related to handedness. We tested participants in both the United States and England in a simple "T-maze" task in order to compare their directional preference. Handedness was the best predictor of participants' directional preference. However, U.S. participants also were statistically more likely to turn right than were English participants. The preference to turn right was not found to be significantly related to eye dominance or reading direction of the primary written language of the participant, although in the case of reading direction, the sample size of right-to-left readers was too small to be conclusive. The findings support that walking direction preference is an additive function of both learned driving patterns and genetic handedness. These findings have practical implications for the design of public spaces such as schools, businesses, and urban centers.
我们验证了E. S. 罗宾逊（1933年）的一项发现，即人们进入建筑物时有右转的倾向。我们假设这种倾向归因于从规定靠道路右侧行驶的交通规则中习得的内容，并且它也可能与用手习惯有关。我们在美国和英国对参与者进行了一项简单的“T型迷宫”任务测试，以比较他们的方向偏好。用手习惯是参与者方向偏好的最佳预测指标。然而，从统计学角度来看，美国参与者比英国参与者更倾向于右转。尽管在阅读方向方面，从右向左阅读者的样本量太小，无法得出结论，但右转偏好与参与者的眼优势或主要书写语言的阅读方向没有显著关联。这些发现支持了行走方向偏好是习得的驾驶模式和遗传用手习惯的累加函数这一观点。这些发现对学校、企业和城市中心等公共场所的设计具有实际意义。
