Left or Right? How Attention and Reading Develop Together

Abstract

When you are playing catch or I Spy, your brain helps you focus on one location and ignore the rest. Did you know that most people are slightly better at focusing on one side of space, either left or right? This is called a focusing bias. The focusing bias is usually so small that you do not notice it in your daily life. This slight bias can be measured with a simple task: crossing a horizontal line at its center. If you have a slight bias, you will cross the horizontal line a little to the left or right of its actual center. In this article, we will tell you about our recent discovery that children in grades 1–3 have a bias toward the left that gets smaller as they get older. This leftward bias may be related to the development of reading skills.