Directional Biases in Children’s Perception of Spatial Order

Abstract

In Study 1, elementary school children were classified according to the directionality with which they related temporal order to spatial position. The majority of kindergarten children appeared to have already established a consistent left-to-right (L-R) or right-to-left (R-L) bias. The frequency of L-R organizers increased with increases in grade level. For grades kingergarten and 1, boys were significantly more likely to be L-R oriented than were girls. The results are consistent with the notion that L-R organizational tendencies are strengthened by training in reading, but they suggest that neither reading-related habits nor left-hemisphere specialization for language function determines children’s initial directional biases. Study 2 showed that a child’s ability to learn the spatial order of a series of items can be relatively facilitated or retarded, respectively, by imposing a directional orientation that is in accord with or counter to his or her directional bias. These results are consistent with the traditional hypothesis that an inappropriate directional approach may retard the development of word-recognition ability among young readers.