Evening Star Newspaper, November 1, 1931, Page 93

THE SUNDAY Science’s interestino test which shows that it’s easier to read from right to left, than it is from left to right — ER 1, 1931, g ] Three different ways of reading. . . . At the l:ft, reading left and going right. . lish—Dbeginning at the . Cenler, reading Hebrew, geing from right to left. " Right, reading Chinese—beginning at the upper right and going dewn. CAN YOU NAME THESE OBJECTS ? BY MARJORIE VAN DE W ATER. OULD you be able to read this page more easily if it were print- ed from right to left, or from the top of the page to the bottom— provided, of course, that you had learned to read in this manner? In localities where only English is in general use, this may seem like an absurd question, but not all languages use the left-to-right direction of printing. In Honolulu, for example, several languages are spoken and read—and they go in contrary directions. There the question of which direction is more natural is a practical one, and the answer has been sought by Ma- -dorah E. Smith of the Territorial Normal School in that city. ‘When you learned to read English, you formed the habit of reading from the top left corner of the page across to the right, skipping abruptly back to the left to go across the sec- ond line, and so on to the bottom only to make another abrupt jump to the top of the next page. You have learned this method so well that it has become automatic with you. You read this way with great ease. So that even when a photograph is described it is “from left to right.” The person who has read only Hebrew, om the contrary, would find it very awkward. For bis language is printed from right to left and he has become thoroughly used to that “back- ward” system. HOSE who read ancient Latin followed still anothef method — they read from Jeft %o right on one line and then back from right to left on the next. This method was called “ox-track” writing, because it is like the way the oxen worked back and forth across the field when they pulied a plow. Here is how a familiar rhyme might Jook printed in the ancient Latin style: Twinkle, twinkle, little star, .era uoy tahw rednow I woH Up above the world so high, yvks eht ni dnomaid a ekilL Could you read it? Was it easy? Well, per- haps you didn't need to read it—maybe you remembered it. All right, then—see whether Ptuo ti lUeps uoy od ro ,drow eht ezingocer uoy t h t e L R LR o] RNAT P o Ll RN -4 ethod of running letters down a col- is foliowed to some extent in advertising. how much the advertiser sacrifices in legi- the sake of the novelyy of the presen- one of the facts that may be dis- & result of this recent study in the of different methods of reading. you have found these samples puzsling, ine the bewilderment of the little 6-year- child in Honolulu who starts to school and immediately is faced with the problem of trying to learn to read two languages—one beginning &t the left top of the page and going east and the other starting at the top right and going south. Naturally the results are chaotic in huemwmam!erbmumgy were not forced by necessity to follow the ar. bitrary conventions of their elders. In a recent report to the Hawalian Academy of Science, she described tests which she made to uncover ral inclination of children before at- school and also after they had had Here is the test given children end edults in Haweii. . . . but the order in which you name the “easy” way for you lo reed. lowsly easy te neme, of cowrse . . way is instruction in either Oriental language or Eng- iish or both. Altogther 740 children from 2 to 8 years of age were tested, and also 112 adults. The test consisted of “reading” a page of pic- tures arranged in five rows of five pictures each. The pictures were of objects which would be thoroughly familiar to even the youngest chil- dren. They included, for instance, a ball, an apple, a shoe and a cat. The page was iaid down squarely in front of the person tested with no hint of where to begin. They were just told, “Let’s see if you can tell me what all these pictures are.” # the pictures were pointed out and named, a record was kept of the order in which they were “read.” The youngest children fol- lowed & haphazard scheme, or rather lack of scheme, apparently begi-ning with the picture which interested thery mos.. There was, how- ever, a slight tendency for them to begin with a picture nearer the right margin than the left and also to start in the lower part of the page. Apparently children have to be taught to start the page at the top. It is not a natural tendency. Very young children do not follow any order at all in the pointing out of the pictures. Of the 25 2-year-olds tested, not cme followed any clear pattern and only one showed traces of & pattern. At the age of 3, however, some children begin to 1 a definite patiern. The plan some- t ollows that used in one of the Oriental or European languages, but often it is one of his own, not vced in any written language. PFor example, 18 per cent of the 3-year-olds used a sort of spiral pattern—they would name the pictures in turn all around the edge of the paper and them travel toward the center. The proportion of children following a defi- nite pattern increases steadily with age up to the age of 6. That was when the children _ started to school, and many of them attended two schools—the native school where an Ori- ental language, printed vertically, was taught, and the American public school where they were taught to read English in a horizontal direction. ; By the age of 7, the children attending only page from a Chinese primer . . . in which the reading maties slarts al the upper right and goes down, s R R T etV BYBm 7772 ©APIR T £ 23 fevn . The articles shown are ridicu- bdesat Ill:m shows which one school would use practically the same read- ing direction for the pictures as that used in the language they were learning, but those at- tending both schools failed to develop a definite pattern to the same extent. Considerable difficulty was encountered in giving the test to adulis for the rather amus- ing reason that it was too simple. It was nec- cessary to explain carefully that there was no catch, and that it was not an intelligence test. The examiner's position was made particu- larly embarrassing because of the fact that the true purpcse of the test could not be di- vulged until after the results had been obtained. A mere hint that the purpose was to test nat- ural direction of reading would have served to make the subjects self-conscious and the direc- tion followed would be unnatural as a conse- quence. BT it was surely difficult to present the group of simple pictures with a straight face and expect the person tested to solemnly point out which was the boat, the doll, the toothbrush. Finally it was possible to find 112 adults will- ing to carry through the test in seriousness. Of these, 50 read only English or languages written in a similar direction. Another 50 read both English and some Oriental language. From the test results of these adults, it was indicated that the habit of reading in a certain direction is more fixed in the person who reads only languages traveling in one direction. .Forty-one of those reading only English fol- lowed the same direction in reading the pic- tures; seven followed some other horizontal direction and only two used a vertical direction. On the other hand, of the 50 who read both Oriental and European languages, only 19 named the pictures in the English direction. Ten used the back-and-forward method of an- cient Latin. All the others used some vertical direction. Miss Smith was anxious also to test adults who read only some Oriental language, but only 10 were found who would submit to the test. One of the 10 Orientals read the test in the English direction, two followed the Hebrew di- rection from left to right herizontally, but the rest all preferred some vertical direction, Two illiterates who were tested read, one in the Hebrew direction and one in inverted old Latin direction. Fime Languigite: ot ro i 0 “astiral” et Aol 2 T e e e il i e Hebrew, cach running opposite to English. The results among both the English readers and the Orientals were probably affected by factors—English-speaking people have a siderable amount of practice in reading up an down because nearly always figures are i this manner. On the other hand, the has practice in reading in the horizontal tion because the comic strip in the Japanese papers is printed horizontally. 2 “The tendency of the youngest children teo begin at the right would seem to show that the starting point of Oriental languages is more natural in that they, too, begin at the right hand,” Miss Smith concludes. . “But the children showed an even more marked tendency to begin at the bottom, which Oriental languages do not do. The preference of the children who could not read for the horie lonmuoppoaedtotheveruwdlncuonmy possibly indicate that that direction is the more natural; but they show frequently an order of their own, the spiral, and a preference for re versing direction on alternate lines as is found in ancient Latin.” THE teachers in Honolulu are not the only ones who have to deal with the problem of the child who insists upon reading and writing in the wrong direction. Any one who has had to teach many left-handed children, or children who have not become fixed in either left or right hand habits, has met with the youngster who persists in writing backwards. The tendency is known to scientists as “strephosymbolia” or twisted symbols. Mirror-% writing is the natural method of writing with the left hand, because movements away from the center of the body are easier than those toward it. Persons with strephosymbolia find mirror-writing much easier than does the nor- mal person, and quite often will write move easily in this manner than