No abstract

Left- and right-handed males and females were given the task of viewing sets of six or eight letters in a 5 X 5 matrix and recalling either (a) the letters, (b) the positions of the letters, or (c) both the letters and the positions. Recall of positions by left-handers was inferior to their recall of letters, and it was inferior to recall of both letters and positions by right-handers. There was no differential recall of letters and positions according to sex. Handedness appears to be a better predictor of cognitive abilities than does sex. The results are discussed in terms of hemispheric specialization referring to handedness and sex.

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the hypothesis that the discriminating and categorizing functions of a label associated with an ambiguous shape can differentially influence delayed recognition memory for the shape. The temporal course of shape recognition was measured after the subjects were trained to associate the shapes with relevant verbal labels, irrelevant verbal labels, or no verbal labels. Either immediately or after delays of 15 min or 1 wk, subjects were given a shape recognition test and both freeand aided-recall tests for retention of the associated verbal labels. Results indicated that relevant verbal labels differentially affect memory for shape and that the discriminating function of the label operates effectively at the time of stimulus encoding. The categorizing function of the label affects the changes occurring during the storage stage of memory. These results are interpreted as supporting the view that the courses of shape recognition and relevant label recall are not independent.

The development of the relation between hand-eye dominance and verbal self-control of motor behavior was examined with 4- and 5-year-olds. Performances of subjects falling into either crossed or consistent hand-eye dominance categories were compared on a two-choice button-pushing task. Children performed this with their dominant hand in one of two conditions: verbalizing and not verbalizing their button-pushing activity. Results showed that crossed hand-eye dominant children gave significantly poorer performances than consistent hand-eye dominant children and that the former used their self-instructions in a motoric manner. These findings were interpreted as supporting the view that the functions of cerebral hemispheres in children with crossed dominance are more immature than those in children with consistent dominance.