Lateral eye movement, reading speed, and visual attention

Abstract

An S, looking at the eyes of a questioner, will make a lateral eye movement, consistently right or left, as he begins to reflect on the answer to the question. To test the hypothesis that right movers do better at tasks requiring visual attention, the S troop color-word interference test was administered to two groups, right and left movers. Right movers were subject to significantly less interference than left movers, thus confirming the hypothesis. Right movers were also found to read faster a list of color names printed in black on white. It is suggested that slower reading time on the color-word card is due in part to the covert response of reading the word, and that the better performance of right movers is due to their greater facility in the making of this covert reading response. © 1969, Psychonomic Journals, Inc.. All rights reserved.