My Own Personal Research (Question)

I would focus on the impacts handedness might have on a child's learning development. Handedness has been attributed to genetic factors as well as asymmetrical brain development, and hand-dominance seems to have some sort of connection with language processing in the brain's hemisphere's; right handed people generally have a left-hemisphere preference for language processing/function and left handed people have right-hemisphere or bilateral preference for language processing/function. It would be interesting to see if these differences impact learning, and in what ways. I hypothesize that hand-dominance would impact a child's learning, with right-handed children developing faster than left-handed children as left handed children must often adapt to a right-handed world.

To give operational definitions to the hypothetical constructs of handedness and learning development, I would define handedness as a strong preference for either the left or right hand, as exhibited through a child's daily activities, such as writing or eating. For learning development, I would focus on test scores on standardized tests such as the MontCAS, which screens for understanding of reading/math.

I would use a cross-sectional research design with participants' ages ranging from 5-10 in order to study learning development at different stages in their education. I would select 25 left and 25 right handed kids from each age group. I would utilize Teacher/Parental reports for additional information on a child's learning patterns/abilities, in addition to the data that could be gleaned from test scores.