Talk from Dr Haiko Ballieux, Psychology, University of Westminster
Across vertebrates, adaptive behaviours, like feeding and avoiding predators, are linked to lateralized brain function. The presence of the behavioural manifestations of these biases are associated with increased task success. Additionally, when an individual’s direction of bias aligns with the majority of the population, it is linked to social advantages. However, it remains unclear if behavioural biases in humans correlate with the same advantages. In my talk I will discuss a large-scale study (N = 313–1661, analyses dependent) that examined whether the strength and alignment of behavioural biases is associated with cognitive and social benefits respectively in humans. To remain aligned with the animal literature, the Comparative Cognition Group evaluated motor-sensory biases linked to motor-sequencing and emotion detection to assess lateralization. Results reveal that moderate hand lateralization is positively associated with task success and task success is, in turn, associated with language fluency, possibly representing a (developmental) cascade effect. Additionally, like other vertebrates, the majority of our human sample possessed a ‘standard’ laterality profile (right hand bias, left visual bias). A ‘reversed’ profile was rare by comparison, and associated with higher self-reported social difficulties and increased rate of autism and/or ADHD. I will highlight the importance of employing a comparative theoretical framing to illuminate how and why different laterization profiles associate with diverging social and cognitive phenotypes.
Open to all Social Sciences staff and students.
Location
Round the Green Table in Psychology, 6th Floor – Copland Building, Cavendish Campus
