Earticle

This study was conducted to ascertain whether a didactic mode of instruction, favored students who indicated a preference for left hemispheric information processing. The subjects were 50 fifth grade students whose California Achievement Test score percentile ranks were between 50 - 80. They were randomly selected from one elementary school in Chapel Hill, NC, USA. All Ss completed the Form CC of "Your Style of Learning and Thinking" (Torrance and McCarthy, 1980) which is a paper/pencil inventory designed to categorize the subjects according to their hemispheric preference for processing information; right hemisphere, left hemisphere, and integrated. Then all Ss received a didactic mode of instruction, a verbal question/answer followed by teacher's reading of a fictional animal story, "The Chinese Bee-eater". After completion of instruction, the Ss were asked to respond to eighteen open-ended questions about the animal. Eight of the 50 subjects were found to fall into the right hemisphere style of information processing group; fourteen into left; and fourteen into integrated. The remaining fourteen could not be assigned to either of these three categories and were not included in the analysis of the results. the mean scores of the comprehensive test among hemispheric groups and among sex groups. A two way analysis of variance also presented no significant differences among the hemispheric preference combined by sex groups. These results failed to prove the research hypothesis that students who indicate a preference for left hemispheric information processing will have higher scores on a comprehensive test after receiving a didactic mode of instruction, the so-called left style of instruction. Some limits in research process and conceptual confusion about hemisphericity were discussed. Finally, it was suggested that educators need to be more careful in drawing educational implications from neurological hemispheric research.