Salience of Compositional Cues and the Order of Presentation in the Picture Reversal Effect

Abstract

Paintings containing cues suggesting left-to-right (LTR) motion are preferred by dextrals over their mirror-reversed versions (RTL) in forced-choices between the simultaneously-presented alternatives. To eliminate a simultaneous-contrast interpretation of the effect and to determine whether motion cues influence choice when paintings are seen alone, a successive-presentation procedure was used. When an LTR version preceded the RTL version, the LTR version was preferred within the pair by dextrals and also was preferred more frequently than RTL versions shown first Thus, these compositional features of single versions were noticed and affected judgment. An order-of-presentation effect was also found, in that the first member of a pair was preferred. Possible explanations for this are considered.