Graphological patterns as a function of handedness and culture

1998

Mem Cogn

Memory for frequently encountered road signs was investigated. In Experiment 1, the average level of recall of road sign features was found to be only 47%. In Experiment 2, more left-handed than righthanded people recalled that a walking figure faces right on one sign, whereas more right-handed than left-handed people recalled that a digging figure faces left on another sign. Performance thus reflected not a difference in level of mnemonic ability between left-handed and right-handed groups but instead the compatibility between group and task. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to draw any figure walking and any figure digging, with a pattern of results similar to that of Experiment 2. It is suggested that handedness effects in recall are mediated by motor imagery.

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalizing everyday memory: Signs and handedness

1998

Mem Cogn

“…We propose that handedness-dependent patterns of cerebral motor activation underlie the effect. It has previously been shown that right-handed and left-handed individuals tend to draw heads facing to the left and to the right, respectively (M. Martin & Jones, 1998;Shanon, 1979), perhaps in response to the constraints of bodily posture (see Meulenbroek & Thomassen, 1992;Rosenbaum, Loukopoulos, Meulenbroek, Vaughan, & Engelbrecht, 1995). We propose that the enduring, asymmetric patterns of activation that underlie this behavior influence memory performance in a homologous manner.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Hale-Bopp and Handedness: Individual Differences in Memory for Orientation

1999

Psychol Sci

The accuracy with which a person recalls the orientation of a human figure or head has been shown to depend systematically on the person's handedness. This study investigated whether memory for the orientation of an inanimate object displays a similar effect. In contrast to previous work investigating memory for depictions encountered over many years, the present work focused on memory for a unique event that engaged considerable attention over a relatively brief period-Comet Hale-Bopp. The results showed that although right-handed and left-handed individuals did not differ in their memory for semantic information concerning the comet, they did differ in their memory for its orientation. Right-handed people were significantly more likely than left-handed people both to recall and to recognize the comet as facing to the left. The results suggest that memory performance may be influenced by patterns of underlying cerebral motor activation.Comets have been the subject of great popular interest for millennia (see Schechner Genuth, 1997). They have often been interpreted as portents of important terrestrial events. A celebrated example is the comet that was associated with the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, and as a result is portrayed in the Bayeaux Tapestry. Newton's development of gravitational theory meant that he and Halley were able to provide the basis for a modern understanding of cometary orbits. Indeed, the comet of 1066 was shown to represent an early appearance by a comet whose regular recurrence was identified by Halley and which thus bears his name. Even when viewed as a purely physical phenomenon, the comet has retained its unique interest as a form of heavenly body that on relatively rare occasions is temporarily bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. This was demonstrated by the great attention paid during 1997 to the most striking comet for many decades, Hale-Bopp (e.g., Burnham, 1997).Given that comets have been appearing throughout history, it may appear unlikely that anything new remains to be discovered about the way that people process information about them cognitively. However, a recent set of unexpected findings concerning the influence of handedness on memory for orientation is suggestive. The first of these findings extended previous work (Jones, 1990;Rubin & Kontis, 1983) investigating memory for coin designs. Both British and Canadian coins bear a portrait facing to the viewer's right. When people were asked to recall verbally the direction in which the head faces (Jones & Martin, 1997;McKelvie & Aikins, 1993), left-handed people were significantly more accurate than right-handed people. Subsequently, it was shown (M. Martin & Jones, 1998) that a similar phenomenon is observed when people attempt to recall the orientation of human figures depicted on common road signs; for right-facing and left-facing figures, recall is higher for, respectively, left-handed and right-handed people.A comet also appears in a particular orientation, with a head at one end and a l...

“…According to this, because of subjects' poor memory, the Queen's head would have been equally likely to have been drawn facing in either direction if it were not for the existence of a peripheral drawing bias. There is some evidence that the majority, right-handed population have a general tendency to draw profiles facing left (Shanon, 1979). It can therefore be argued that it is this drawing bias that is responsible for the apparent misremembering.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Misremembering a familiar object: Mnemonic illusion, not drawing bias

1992

Memory & Cognition

It was reported by Jones (l990) The great majority of coins currently in circulation in Britain carry the head of Queen Elizabeth II, and in all of these the Queen's head faces to the right. Yet in a study following previous work with U.S. coins by Nickerson and Adams (1979) and Rubin and Kontis (1983), Jones (1990) found that when participants were asked to draw current British coins, only a minority of the drawn heads correctly faced right. The proportions of heads that incorrectly faced left in three separate experiments were found to be 67%, 70%, and 88%. In each case, the proportion was significantly beyond even the chance level of 50%. Jones concluded, therefore, that what had been discovered was not an instance merely of poor memory but, more surprisingly, an instance of systematic misremembering. By analogy with perceptual illusions, we might term it here a mnemonic illusion. Just as the perception of a line's length is distorted in the Miiller-Lyer illusion by related information present in the perceptual field, so it was postulated by Jones that memory for the direction of a coin's head is distorted by related information present in mnemonic storage.An alternative explanation of these results exists, however, in the shape of an elaboration of the poor-memory hypothesis. According to this, because of subjects' poor memory, the Queen's head would have been equally likely to have been drawn facing in either direction if it were not for the existence of a peripheral drawing bias. There is some evidence that the majority, right-handed population have a general tendency to draw profiles facing left (Shanon, 1979). It can therefore be argued that it is this drawing bias that is responsible for the apparent misremembering.The drawing-bias hypothesis is simple and not a priori implausible. Furthermore, it has the virtue of being directly testable. If it is true that the apparent misremembering of the Queen's head observed by Jones (1990) resulted from a drawing bias, then removal of the drawing stage should cause the disappearance of the apparent misremembering. This prediction was tested by the following experiment.EXPERIMENT 1 Method A total of 103 British participants were tested at Oxford University. Their ages ranged from 16 to 65 years, with a median age of 37 years; 49 were female and 54 were male. Most participants were attending an ophthalmological congress. Each participant was asked to respond in writing to the written instructions "Please form a mental picture of a penny coin. Which direction is the Queen facing?" ResultsThe DiscussionFrom the results of this experiment, we may conclude that the phenomenon of systematic misremembering observed by Jones (1990) cannot be attributed to a drawing bias. When participants make a verbal response instead of a pictorial one, the phenomenon survives intact at approximately the same length.What, then, is the correct explanation of the Queen's Head mnemonic illusion? We believe that the best explanation remains that advanced by Jones (1990). This ex-211