Citation

Dellatolas G, Viguier D, Deloche G, de Agostini M. Cortex 1998; 34(5): 659-676.

Affiliation

Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, U.472, Epidémiologie et Biostatistiques, Villejuif, France. dellatol@vjf.inserm.fr

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Masson Editeur)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

9872370

Abstract

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.

Language: en