Bisections in two languages: when number processing, spatial representation, and habitual reading direction interact.

Calabria and Rossetti (2005) demonstrated that spatial biases related to the mental number line can be seen even when bisecting strings of number words. Strings of smaller magnitude number words were bisected further to the left than strings of larger magnitude number words. The current study investigated whether the left-to-right mental number line associated with number processing will result in similar spatial biases despite a habitual, right-to-left reading direction.

Visual demand and visual field presentation influence natural scene processing.

Background: Bottom-up and top-down processes are involved in visual analysis of scenes. Here we examined the influence of top-down visual demand on natural scene processing.

Methods: We measured accuracy and response time in adults performing two stimuli-equivalent tasks.

Assessment of visuo-attentional abilities in young children with or without visual disorder: toward a systematic screening in the general population.

In young children, visual attention, analysis or memory is only rarely evaluated. Moreover, tools to test for such higher-order visual capacities in children are limited. In an attempt to develop and refine such tools, we selected nine tests to assess visuo-attentional abilities before formal reading education (grade 1).

Egocentric reference in bidirectional readers as measured by the straight-ahead pointing task.

The present study aimed to show that bidirectional reading and language exposure influence the position of egocentric reference (ER), the perceived direction of the body's sagittal axis proposed to act as an anchor for movements in extracorporeal space. Directional factors (e.g.

Facial expression during emotional monologues in unilateral stroke: an analysis of monologue segments.

Emotional monologues of brain-damaged subjects were examined to determine whether interhemispheric or intrahemispheric differences exist for facial emotional expression. A special feature was the comparison of expressions produced during the initial, middle, and last segments of the monologues. Videotaped emotional and non-emotional monologues from the New York Emotion Battery (Borod, Welkowitz, & Obler, 1992) of eight right brain-damaged (RBD), eight left brain-damaged (LBD), and eight normal control (NC) subjects, with matching for demographics and lesion location, were rated.