Attribution of feature magnitudes is influenced by trained reading-writing direction

Von Hecker, Ulrich ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8873-0515, Lari, Zahra Arjmandi, Fazilat-Pour, Masoud and Krumpholtz, Lea 2022. Attribution of feature magnitudes is influenced by trained reading-writing direction. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 34 (2) , pp. 194-207. 10.1080/20445911.2021.1978472

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Abstract

Spatial configurations amongst stimuli can influence magnitude attributions. Someone’s acquired reading and writing direction (RWD) can provide a spatial schema of primacy extending from left (maximum) to right (minimum) for Westerners and opposite for leftward RWD languages. Primacy information can be transformed into a magnitude attribution regarding a feature quality, perceiving an object as having “more” of a certain quality for Westerners when positioned left amongst two similar objects, likewise when positioned right for people with a right-to-left RWD. Results showed that native English speakers tended to attribute greater magnitude of a given feature in fictitious products displayed left within a pair, indicating which of two products was “most” representative of a certain quality (Experiment 1a) but they would randomly choose when asked which product represented “least” of the quality (Experiment 1b). A similar, but reversed pattern of effects was obtained for Farsi participants only familiar with Farsi (Experiment 2).

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	2044-5911
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 September 2021
Date of Acceptance:	6 September 2021
Last Modified:	23 May 2023 21:52
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/144035

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