1. Nonverbal fixation control in young children induces a left-field advantage in digit recall
- Author
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Richard Thomae, John R. Kershner, and Ragan Callaway
- Subjects
Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Fixation, Ocular ,Audiology ,Functional Laterality ,Developmental psychology ,Behavioral Neuroscience ,Nonverbal communication ,Memory ,Foveal ,medicine ,Humans ,Child ,Dominance, Cerebral ,Recall ,Verbal Behavior ,Information processing ,Eye movement ,Numerical digit ,Child, Preschool ,Laterality ,Fixation (visual) ,Visual Perception ,Female ,Visual Fields ,Psychology - Abstract
Eighty-six right-handed children, aged 5–6 yr; 43 boys and 43 girls, were tested for their verbal report of digits presented tachistoscopically under simultaneous, bilateral viewing conditions. Verbal foveal fixation stimuli, used to control for eye movements, resulted in an expected right, visual half-field (VHF) superiority. Manual identification of a nonverbal central-field fixation target prior to digit recall produced a left-VHF advantage of equal magnitude. This is the first demonstration of a reversal of visual laterality effects through fixation control procedures. The results indicate that current methods of laterality testing are unable to distinguish between two competing explanations. Either one hemisphere is more specialized and efficient than the other or, alternatively, one hemisphere is activated more than the other by the information processing demands of the task.
- Published
- 1977
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