Effects of Stimulus Reversals on Lateral Dominance in Word Recognition

In two experiments, eight-letter words and nonsense words, having the letters and the sequence of letters in normal or reversed orientations, were briefly exposed across fixation. Recognition of letters to the right and left of fixation was, on the whole, affected by directional attributes of the stimuli. These results are interpreted as providing evidence for functional factors in the scanning of visual patterns, as opposed to “structural” dominances in the nervous system.