title: Social environment elicits lateralized navigational paths in two populations of typically developing children.
abstract: The current study provides the first evidence of human lateralized navigation of a social space within a naturalistic environment. We employed a quantitative, observational approach and report on a detailed set of nearly 700 independent navigational routes from two separate child populations consisting of over 300 typically developing children, aged five to fourteen years. The navigational path was considered across the sagittal plane (left, right) around three distinct target types (peer, adult and object). Both child populations expressed a significant bias for choosing a rightward navigational path around a human target (e.g., peer, adult) and no lateral preference for navigation around fixed, inanimate objects. A rightward navigational path provides an advantage for the left visual field and the right hemisphere, facilitating both the production and perception of social-emotion stimuli. The findings are consistent with evidence from studies of non-human animal species demonstrating that the social environment elicits predictable lateralized behavior, and support an early evolutionary delineation of functional processing by the two hemispheres.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UH, England, United Kingdom. Electronic address: g.forrester@westminster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Gillian S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Forrester
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UH, England, United Kingdom. Electronic address: mollymaecrawley08@live.co.uk.
authors.forename: Molly
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Crawley
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UH, England, United Kingdom. Electronic address: ckp1@hotmail.co.uk.
authors.forename: Casey
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Palmer
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D012931:Social Environment; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Cerebral lateralization; Children; Laterality; Social environment