Abstract
The grayscale task requires participants to make forced-choice luminance judgments of two mirror-reversed luminance gradients. Neurologically healthy left-to-right readers in Western countries, show strong leftward and upward attentional biases in the horizontal and vertical conditions, respectively. In this study, we examined the grayscale task performance of young adults whose native language was Japanese, a language with complex writing rules including changes in the directionality of reading. Additionally, we examined the effects of sex, handedness, and hand used. Half (64 men and 64 women) of the participants included in this study were left-handed. Participants were administered a paper version of the grayscale task in horizontal and vertical conditions. As with left-to-right readers, respective leftward and upward biases were observed in the two conditions. The main effects of sex, handedness, and hand used and the possible interactions among the three variables were non-significant for either condition. The results of this study can be used as basic data for the application of this task to clinical and analog research in neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders in Japan.
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Acknowledgements
We are especially grateful to J. B. Mattingley and M. E. R. Nicholls for the supply of the grayscale task. We would like to thank Editage [https://www.editage.com] for editing and reviewing this manuscript for English language. This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS; Tokyo, Japan; Grant Numbers JP15K04130 and JP18K03097).
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Yamashita, H. Horizontal and vertical perceptual asymmetries for the grayscale task in healthy Japanese young adults. Cult. Brain 9, 35–47 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-020-00096-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-020-00096-0