Components of asymmetrical visual encoding of geometrically transformed scripts.

Austrian and Israeli subjects were presented tachistoscopically with geometrically transformed numbers, nonsense syllables in Latin letters and Hebrew words (only the Israeli). Opposite reading and writing habits and different hand dominance were used as experimental variables. Criteria for evaluating the data were scanning pattern (voluntary preferred reading direction) and reading performance. A difference in reading pattern was found between Austrian right- and left-handed subjects but no difference in their reading performance. Also between Austrian and Israeli right-handed subjects a difference in the reading pattern appeared as well as in reading performance. Furthermore, the scanning pattern used by Austrian right-handed subjects in reading geometrically transformed numbers was different from their pattern in reading syllables. Distinguished were two sources of asymmetries, an intrinsic in visual mechanisms and a structural one in the stimulus itself.