Visual aesthetic preference: Effects of handedness, sex, and age-related reading/writing directional scanning experience

Agostini, Maria De; Kazandjian, Seta; Cavézian, Céline; Lellouch, J; Chokron, Sylvie

doi:10.1093/wsr/wsq006

Cited by 16 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…As handedness may affect lateral biases in aesthetic experience (De Agostini et al, 2010), the analysis was restricted to right-handed participants were (37 Spaniards and 38 Moroccans). Their self-rated level of expertise in photography was 1.13 (SD = 0.79, range 0-3, with only 6 participants rating themselves with a 3, and 11 with a 2).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chokron and De Agostini (2000) compared drawings of objects which can move (e.g., a truck or a fish facing toward one side), static objects (e.g., a statue with an arm extended to one side), and landscapes (e.g., a beach with a salient object located on one side). They observed clear lateral preferences congruent with RWD in French and Hebrew participants in the drawings of moving and static objects: French users preferred L-R drawings whereas Hebrew participants preferred their R-L versions (see also De Agostini, Kazandjian, Cavezian, Lellouch, & Chokron, 2010, for mediating factors such as Sex and handedness; Ishii, Okubo, Nicholls, & Imai, 2011, for a replication with Japanese readers; and Heath, Mahmasanni, Rouhana, & Nassif, 2005, for an exploration of spatial dimensions specific to landscapes). Nachshon, Argaman, and Luria (1999) used profile drawings of people (which correspond to the category of objects with potential motion) and found similar results: L-R readers preferred L-R profiles, and R-L readers preferred R-L profiles.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reading and writing direction effects on the aesthetic appreciation of photographs

Chahboun

Flumini

González

et al. 2016

Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Does reading and writing direction (RWD) influence the aesthetic appreciation of photography? Pérez González showed that nineteenth-century Iranian and Spanish professional photographers manifest lateral biases linked to RWD in their compositions. The present study aimed to test whether a population sample showed similar biases. Photographs with left-to-right (L-R) and right-to-left (R-L) directionality were selected from Pérez González's collections and presented in both original and mirror-reversed forms to Spanish (L-R readers) and Moroccan (R-L readers) participants. In Experiment 1, participants rated each picture for its aesthetic pleasingness. The results showed neither effects of lateral organization nor interactions with RWD. In Experiment 2, each picture and its mirror version were presented together and participants chose the one they liked better. Spaniards preferred rightward versions and Moroccans preferred leftward versions. RWD therefore affects aesthetic impressions of photography in our participants when people pay attention to the lateral spatial dimension of pictures. The observed directional aesthetic preferences were not sensitive to the sex of the model in the photographs, failing to support expectations from the hypotheses of emotionality and agency. Preferences were attributable to the interaction between general scanning strategies and scanning habits linked to RWD.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 90%

Reading and writing direction effects on the aesthetic appreciation of photographs

Chahboun

Flumini

González

et al. 2016

Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Interestingly, in contrast to these examples of left-hemifield bias, the bias in reporting of content is to the right when the task is to judge the aesthetics of pictures or paintings. Right-handers prefer images with the most important content located to the right (Chokron & De Agostini, 2000;De Agostini, Kazandjian, Cavézian, Lellouch, & Chokron, 2010;Levy, 1976). Some explanations for this discrepancy have been attempted, such as the idea that the rightward content of the picture balances the subject's leftward attentional bias (Levy, 1976) or that attracting the gaze to the right leaves most of the image in the left visual field to be evaluated by the right hemisphere (Beaumont, 1985).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial biases in viewing behavior

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Viewing behavior exhibits temporal and spatial structure that is independent of stimulus content and task goals. One example of such structure is horizontal biases, which are likely rooted in left-right asymmetries of the visual and attentional systems. Here, we studied the existence, extent, and mechanisms of this bias. Left- and right-handed subjects explored scenes from different image categories, presented in original and mirrored versions. We also varied the spatial spectral content of the images and the timing of stimulus onset. We found a marked leftward bias at the start of exploration that was independent of image category. This left bias was followed by a weak bias to the right that persisted for several seconds. This asymmetry was found in the majority of right-handers but not in left-handers. Neither low- nor high-pass filtering of the stimuli influenced the bias. This argues against mechanisms related to the hemispheric segregation of global versus local visual processing. Introducing a delay in stimulus onset after offset of a central fixation spot also had no influence. The bias was present even when stimuli were presented continuously and without any requirement to fixate, associated to both fixation- and saccade-contingent image changes. This suggests the bias is not caused by structural asymmetries in fixation control. Instead the pervasive horizontal bias is compatible with known asymmetries of higher-level attentional areas related to the detection of novel events.

show abstract

“…Both hemispheric specialization (Neimeier et al, 2007) and cultural preferences have been hypothesized to be the origin of perceptual bias (Nachson et al, 1999; Chokron and Agostini, 2000; Health et al, 2005; Christian et al, 2007). Visual aesthetic preference has been shown to be affected by handedness, sex and age as well as related to directional scanning and reading/writing habits (De Agostini et al, 2010). An interesting finding demonstrates that directional preference is not limited to the visual modality but responds similarly to the auditory modality (Ouellet et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric bias in user guided segmentations of brain structures

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Brain morphometric studies often incorporate comparative hemispheric asymmetry analyses of segmented brain structures. In this work, we present evidence that common user guided structural segmentation techniques exhibit strong left-right asymmetric biases and thus fundamentally influence any left-right asymmetry analyses. In this study, MRI scans from ten pediatric subjects were employed for studying segmentations of amygdala, globus pallidus, putamen, caudate, and lateral ventricle. Additionally, two pediatric and three adult scans were used for studying hippocampus segmentation. Segmentations of the sub-cortical structures were performed by skilled raters using standard manual and semi-automated methods. The left-right mirrored versions of each image were included in the data and segmented in a random order to assess potential left-right asymmetric bias. Using shape analysis we further assessed whether the asymmetric bias is consistent across subjects and raters with the focus on the hippocampus. The user guided segmentation techniques on the sub-cortical structures exhibited left-right asymmetric volume bias with the hippocampus displaying the most significant asymmetry values (p≪0.01). The hippocampal shape analysis revealed the bias to be strongest on the lateral side of the body and medial side of the head and tail. The origin of this asymmetric bias is considered to be based in laterality of visual perception; therefore segmentations with any degree of user interaction contain an asymmetric bias. The aim of our study is to raise awareness in the neuroimaging community regarding the presence of the asymmetric bias and its influence on any left-right hemispheric analyses. We also recommend reexamining previous research results in the light of this new finding.

show abstract

Visual aesthetic preference: Effects of handedness, sex, and age-related reading/writing directional scanning experience

Cited by 16 publications

References 33 publications

Reading and writing direction effects on the aesthetic appreciation of photographs

Reading and writing direction effects on the aesthetic appreciation of photographs

Spatial biases in viewing behavior

Asymmetric bias in user guided segmentations of brain structures

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About