| Summary: | The handedness patterns, communications, and sequencing abilities of 80 deaf and hearing children from three to seven-and-a-half years old were analyzed to see what they can tell us about how children think. The children's actions and language seemed to correspond to their ability to perform a variety of sequencing tasks. Significant correlations of the sequencing task scores with age, with handedness, and with later school ratings suggest developmental progressions, and a link between functional lateralities of hands and hemispheres. Manual specialization and coordination appear to be an expression of a mental ability to both discriminate and integrate information, to relate parts to a whole, to determine relevant details and arrange materials in a sequential order. In the first stage of development unity and symmetry tend to prevail: Both hands are used simultaneously and with little differentiation of function; objects are matched according to a single <i>same</i> feature and are arranged symmetrically from the child's midline and around one central object. The second stage is characterized by duality and asymmetry: Each hand is used alternately and with equivalent frequency; <i>differences</i> are detected; objects are paired, and dichotomous groupings are formed. What distinguishes the final stage is plurality: Manual movements become specialized, coordinated, and continuous as a complementary system evolves in which one hand is subordinate to the other and each is assigned a specific act; <i>several</i> attributes of the objects are associated, and materials are placed in logical progressions.
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