Effect of habitual reading direction on saccadic eye movements: A pilot study

Cognitive processes can influence the characteristics of saccadic eye movements. Reading habits, including habitual reading direction, also affect cognitive and visuospatial processes, favouring attention to the side where reading begins. Few studies have investigated the effect of habitual reading direction on saccade directionality of low-cognitive-demand stimuli (such as dots). The current study examined horizontal prosaccade, antisaccade, and self-paced saccade in subjects with two primary habitual reading directions. We hypothesised that saccades responding to the stimuli in subject’s habitual reading direction would show a longer prosaccade latency and lower antisaccade error rate (errors being a reflexive glance to a sudden-appearing target, rather than a saccade away from it). Sixteen young Chinese participants with primary habitual reading direction from left to right and sixteen young Arabic and Persian participants with primary habitual reading direction from right to left were recruited. All subjects spoke/read English as their second language. Subjects needed to look towards a 5°/10° target in the prosaccade task or look towards the mirror image location of the target in the antisaccade task and look between two 10° targets in the self-paced saccade task. Only Arabic and Persian participants showed a shorter and directional prosaccade latency towards 5° stimuli against their habitual reading direction. No significant effect of reading direction on antisaccade latency towards the correct directions was found. Chinese readers were found to generate significantly shorter prosaccade latencies and higher antisaccade directional errors compared with Arabic and Persian readers for stimuli appearing at their habitual reading side. The present pilot study provides insights into the effect of reading habits on saccadic eye movements of low-cognitive-demand stimuli and offers a platform for future studies to investigate the relationship between reading habits and eye movement behaviours.