Laterality and school achievement: interactions between familial handedness and assessed laterality

179 8- to 12-yr.-old children received hand-preference, eye-preference, dichotic (digits and nonverbal sounds) tests, and the Wide Range Achievement Test. These data and those from previous studies suggest that brain organization for receptive language laterality can be predicted by familial handedness in conjunction with assessed hand-eye preference. A model of optimum functional ear laterality patterns within a given brain organization is advanced. For example, the "typical" pattern of a right-ear (left-hemisphere) advantage for verbal stimuli was associated with high achievement scores only for right-handed individuals with a family history of dextrality.