The purpose of this study was to investigate order-of-practice effects for the acquisition of a complex basketball skill in a bilateral transfer paradigm. The task required participants to dribble as fast as possible in slalom-like movements across six javelins and return to the initial position. Fifty-two right-handed school children (M age =…

Visual line bisection is a reliable and valid laterality task that is typically used with patients with acquired brain damage to assess right hemisphere functioning. Neurologically normal individuals tend to bisect lines to the left of the objective midline whereas those with right parietal damage bisect lines to the right. In this study children…

Language and arithmetic are both lateralized to the left hemisphere in the majority of right-handed adults. Yet, does this similar lateralization reflect a single overall constraint of brain organization, such an overall "dominance" of the left hemisphere for all linguistic and symbolic operations? Is it related to the lateralization of specific…

Dichotic listening test (DL) is an important tool to disclose speech dominance in healthy subjects and in clinical cases. The aim of this study was to probe if focal epilepsy in children reveals a corresponding suppression of the ear reports contralateral to seizure onset site. Thus, 15 children and adolescents with clinically and…

The authors examined internalizing behavior problems at middle childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood and brain-based measures of stress vulnerability in 154 right-handed, nonimpaired young adults (M age = 23 years): 71 (30 males, 41 females) born at extremely low birth weight (ELBW; less than 1,000 g) and 83 (35 males, 48 females) controls…

The relationship between consistency of hand preference, left hemispheric specialization, and cognitive functioning was examined in an ongoing longitudinal investigation. Children were classified as consistent or inconsistent in their hand preference across 5 assessments from ages 18 to 42 months. Findings demonstrated that (a) this early…

A link between developmental language disorders and atypical cerebral lateralization has been postulated since the 1920s, but evidence has been indirect and inconsistent. The current study investigated this proposal using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD), which assesses blood flow through the middle cerebral arteries serving…

Introduction: Early observations from lesion studies suggested right hemisphere (RH) dysfunction in ADHD. However, a strictly right-lateralized deficit has not been well supported. An alternatively view suggests increased R greater than L asymmetry of brain function and abnormal interhemispheric interaction. If true, RH pathology in ADHD should…

Background: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is strongly influenced by heritability. Identifying heritable vulnerability traits (endophenotypes) that mark a relatively high risk of developing the disorder can contribute to the identification of risk genes. A fruitful area for the search for such endophenotypes may be motor control…

Previous research has revealed a lack of planum temporale (PT) asymmetry in adults with autism. This finding is now extended to children and adolescents with the disorder. MRI scans were obtained from 12 children with autism and 12 gender, handedness and age-matched comparison participants. The volume of gray matter in the PT and Heschl's gyrus…

How "differences" between the two sides of the brain (or "laterality") relate to level of function are important components of theories of the origin and purpose of hemispheric asymmetry, although different measures show different relationships, and this heterogeneity makes discerning any underlying relationships a difficult…

Surgical treatment appears to improve the cognitive prognosis in children undergoing surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The beneficial effects of surgery on memory functions, particularly on material-specific memory, are more difficult to assess because of potentially interacting factors such as age range, intellectual level,…

This study compared hand preference and motor skills in 20 children with autism with 40 children either typically developing or with developmental delays. Results indicated that the lack of hand preference in children with autism was not a function of their cognitive delay or a lack of motor skills. Results supported the bilateral brain…

Objective: The authors investigated line bisection performance in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) subtypes. Previous research with neurotypical children found a rightward bias with right-hand use and a leftward bias with left-hand use; however, research with AD/HD participants has failed to similarly measure the…

This literature review examines the research on the use of right and left hands in the reading of braille. Results suggest that right-handed people may read braille more accurately with the left hand. Studies have also found differences between girls and boys and changes over the developmental period. (DB)