The psychological aspects of left-handedness and sinistrality among schoolchildren

Abstract

Nowadays, there are many schoolchildren who demonstrate a large number of left-sided motor and sensory preferences. It can be considered as external markers of functional hemispheric asymmetry of the brain.The main purpose of the study is to investigate psychological peculiarities and specificity of age-related dynamics of laterality pattern’s formation in junior schoolchildren. The findings show that left-handers differ greatly from right-handed schoolchildren in their mental development by having some peculiarities of intelligence, world’s perception and prevailing thinking strategies, ways of memorization, specificity of emotional-affective expression. As a result they have some educational peculiarities and difficulties. The main problems of left-handed children in school performance are academic failure, lack of perseverance, anxiety neurosis, and extreme emotional lability. Integrated development of left and right hemispheres of left-handed schoolchildren is a favorable condition for their harmonious personal and intellectual development and effective mastering of various modules of the school curriculum. The technological solution of the problem of teaching the children with left-sided laterality is to include in educational programs some special exercises to develop imagination, emotional sensitivity, integrity of perception, global view to the problems, creativeness, and original approaches to tasks’ solving. К eywords: functional asymmetry of the brain; laterality profile; left-handedness; sinistrality; neuropsychology of childhood.