People exhibit consistent leftward spatial biases across a variety of tasks. However, individuals with a native reading direction other than left-to-right (LTR) show an attenuation of the leftward bias. The current study used procedurally similar tasks to examine spatial ability and aesthetic preferences in LTR and right-to-left (RTL) groups. In the spatial task participants viewed a centred rectangle partially occluded by an overlapping circle and estimated the centre of the circle with a single mouse click. In the aesthetic task participants used the mouse to control a "virtual flashlight" to light images of abstract paintings in the most aesthetically pleasing way. Contrary to predictions, smaller errors were made for circles on the right and estimations were progressively less accurate as circle size increased in the spatial task. On the aesthetic task, light placements of LTR participants were biased to the left and significantly different from the slightly rightward placements of RTL participants. As predicted, when completing the aesthetics task amounts of time scanning left or right visual space were different between groups. Findings support the theory that directional scanning biases attenuate leftward lateral biases and further, the nature of the visuospatial task may vary the strength of lateral bias.

中文翻译：

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审美和空间位置判断中的横向偏见：任务与本机阅读方向之间的差异。

人们在各种任务中表现出一致的向左空间偏见。但是，具有自然阅读方向而不是从左到右（LTR）的个人显示出向左偏差的减弱。当前的研究使用程序相似的任务来检查LTR和从右到左（RTL）组的空间能力和审美偏好。在空间任务中，参与者查看了一个被重叠圆部分遮挡的居中矩形，并通过单击鼠标来估计了圆的中心。在美学任务中，参与者使用鼠标来控制“虚拟手电筒”，以最美观的方式点亮抽象绘画的图像。与预测相反，右侧的圆圈的误差较小，随着空间任务中圆圈尺寸的增加，估算的准确性逐渐降低。在美学任务上，LTR参与者的灯光放置偏向左侧，并且与RTL参与者的稍微向右放置有显着差异。如所预测的，完成美学任务时，两组之间扫描左或右视觉空间的时间量是不同的。研究结果支持定向扫描偏向减弱左横向偏向的理论，此外，视觉空间任务的性质可能会改变横向偏向的强度。