Right-left orientation and significance of systematic reversal in children.
Shortly before the acquisition of right and left, which generally occurs around age 6-7 years, a very simple right/left discrimination task makes it possible to distinguish groups of children with strikingly different cognitive abilities. Preschool children aged from 5 to 6.4 years were asked to show their left hand, right eye, left ear and right hand. On a variety of simple cognitive tasks exploring verbal fluency, syntactic comprehension, working memory, visuo-spatial ability and number processing, children who made from 1 to 3 errors (14% of the sample) performed significantly worse than those who showed systematic reversal (30%) and those who made no error. Differential use of logical thinking can partially explain these differences. Neuropsychological implications of these developmental findings are discussed.
Dellatolas
G
G
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, U.472, Epidémiologie et Biostatistiques, Villejuif, France. dellatol@vjf.inserm.fr
Viguier
D
D
Deloche
G
G
De Agostini
M
M
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis