The impact of reading and writing skills on a visual-motor integration task: a comparison between illiterate and literate subjects

摘要

Previous studies have shown a significant association between reading skills and the performance on visuo-motortasks. In order to clarify whether reading and writing skills modulate non-linguistic domains, we investigated theperformance of two literacy groups on a visuo-motor integration task with non-linguistic stimuli. Twenty-oneilliterate participants and twenty matched literate controls were included in the experiment. Subjects were instructedto use the right or the left index finger to point to and touch a randomly presented target on the right or left side of atouch screen. The results showed that the literate subjects were significantly faster in detecting and touching targetson the left compared to the right side of the screen. In contrast, the presentation side did not affect the performanceof the illiterate group. These results lend support to the idea that having acquired reading and writing skills, andthus a preferred left-to-right reading direction, influences visual scanning.