The study evaluated the hypothesis that familial left-handed children, who presumably have bilateral representation of language ability, should show an impairment in spatial abiblity on 44 children (22 right handed, 11 familial left handed, and 11 nonfamilial left handed) whose average age was 8 years old. (Author/PHR)

Unilateral forced nostril breathing (UFNB) through the left nostril is associated with enhanced spatial abilities, whereas UFNB through the right nostril is associated with enhanced verbal abilities. However, the effects of UFNB on standard tasks of laterality (e.g., dichotic listening) are unknown. This study employed dichotic listening for word…

Individual differences in verbal/analytic and nonverbal/holistic cognitive strategies were studied in relationship to performance levels in spatial tasks, sex and handedness. Analytic processes are described as sequential, resulting in decomposition of stimulus information, and holistic processes, as parallel, involving information synthesis.…

Examines language and spatial lateralization of 49 elementary American Indian students using a cognitive-manual dual task model and psychoeducational assessment techniques. All students were found to be left-hemisphere dominant for language and some were lateralized to the left hemisphere for spatial function. Contradicts evidence of right-brain…

Compared lateral preference patterns for normal and learning-disabled children. Results indicated that learning-disabled children were more bilateral on factors involving visually fine motor activity, listening, and fine motor foot preference. Also studied the verbal-spatial abilities of learning-disabled children classified as normal or…

There is a growing awareness among researchers that the magnitude of cognitive sex differences is affected by a number of subject variables. To examine spatial and verbal cognitive sex differences as a function of personal and family handedness, the 478 offspring who participated in the Minnesota family study and 454 offspring who participated in…

Differences in how the two hemispheres of the brain handle spatial information were studied with blind subjects and blindfolded sighted subjects. The performances of all groups declined as the relative disorientation between the target and its duplicate increased, suggesting that visual imagery is not crucial to mental rotation. (Author/SEW)

Examined the hypothesis that aging and hemispheric laterality interact to produce relatively greater decrements in older individuals in right hemispheric dominant (visuospatial) than left hemispheric dominant (verbal) tasks in 24 early middle-aged and 24 older males. Data did not support the notion of a laterality effect associated with aging.…

Sex differences in cognitive skills, grouped into motor, spatial and linguistic areas, are assessed in relation to current theories of cerebral lateralization. Few convincing sex differences exist, either overall, or in interactions with functional localization. Qualifying criteria include age, birth order, culture, sex of experimenter and sex…

Left-handers with an inverted handwriting posture were compared with other left-handers and with right-handers on a spatial reasoning test. Results were consistent with the hypothesis that left-inverted subjects had relatively bilateral representation of verbal and spatial functions. Bilateral representation is assumed to be inefficient.…

This bibliography cites references dealing with background material on the functions of the human brain and current research on sex differences in brain development. A list of 10 books published since 1974 is followed by a more extensive annotated bibliography of 29 articles, and a bibliography of 19 reports, complete with ERIC reference numbers…

Four factors have been reported in the literature as being related to spatial test performance. This study investigated the main and interaction effects of sex, handedness, birth order, and experience on three different types of spatial performance; surface development, object rotation, and coordination of viewpoints. A total of 217 undergraduate…

Eighty blindfolded healthy female subjects participated in an active and a passive straight-ahead pointing task to study the estimation of the subjective sagittal middle in the presence or absence of an active haptic exploration. Subjects were to point straight-ahead with their left or right index finger starting from different right- or…

Three studies examined how children of different ages and cultural backgrounds represent depth relations of near and far, and front and behind, on a two-dimensional surface. A lateral bias to place near objects on the left side appeared in English and Hebrew readers of all ages and in older Arabic readers. (MM)

It has been suggested that the right and left mesial temporal lobes are specialized for processing different types of information for long-term memory (LTM). Although findings have been consistent in regard to the dominant role of the left mesial temporal lobe (MTL) in verbal memory, the role of the right MTL in non-verbal memory remains…