Using cerebral dominance for education programs

Instructional methods in today's classroom are sometimes based on the notion of cerebral dominance. However, the link between hemispheric laterality and education practice is highly questionable. One instrument used by teachers to assess individual differences in cerebral dominance is a paper-and-pencil survey called Your Style of Learning and Thinking (SOLAT; Torrance, Reynolds, Riegel, & Ball, 1977). In this study, the authors explored the psychometric properties of the SOLAT in three phases. In the first phase, the authors examined SOLAT's construct validity. Contrary to cerebral dominance theory, a principal factor analysis revealed a seven-factor solution. The second phase was conducted to determine the SOLAT's internal consistency and test-retest reliability coefficients. As expected, these analyses generated low to moderate correlations. In the final phase, the authors further examined the SOLAT's construct validity by comparing the performance of brain-injured versus normal adults. With one exception, there were no significant differences. The results of this study did not support the notion of hemisphericity, at least not as measured by the SOLAT. Therefore, educators should not use the SOLAT to categorize students in terms of their preferred mode of processing information.