Vertical-horizontal differences in visual space recognition of Americans and Japanese

Abstract

This study compared two different written language groups, Americans and Japanese. Interestingly, Japanese can be written and read ether vertically or horizontally, but English can be done only horizontally. Since vision is a learned process, especially skilled reading is highly automated process, we suspected that Japanese would have more effective vertical visual recognition process than would Americans. In order to examine our hypothesis, three tasks were designed as follows. Card task 1 was oral reading task. Card task 2 was searching and counting task without vocalization process. Computer task was letter recognition on a computer monitor. All three tasks had two types of trials, vertical and horizontal. 25 American and 28 Japanese subjects were involved in this study. The results of card task 2 supported our assumption that Japanese had more effectiveness in vertical task and Americans had more effectiveness in horizontal task with significant difference.