Environmental script affects lateral asymmetry of word recognition: A study of French–Hebrew bilinguals tested in Israel and in France

Abstract

A written word is identified more easily when it is presented in the right than in the left visual field. This right visual field superiority (RVFS) may be explained by the left hemisphere's role in reading and by reading direction in left-to-right scripts. However, the comparison of left-to-right and right-to-left scripts had not resulted in systematic differences. It had also been found that the linguistic environment has an effect on visuospatial bias. We hypothesized that the linguistic environment might also affect RVFS. In an identification task, French and Hebrew words were presented in each visual field to four groups of 24 neurologically healthy participants, all of whom read French and Hebrew as a first or second language: native French speakers in France, native French speakers in Israel, native Hebrew speakers in Israel, and native Hebrew speakers in France. Results showed a greater RVFS with French than with Hebrew words in all groups except the native Hebrew speakers in Israel. Thus, at least for native Hebrew speakers, the country where participants lived also had an effect on the differential RVFS between languages, suggesting an effect of environmental script or reading practice.