Right-Left Discrimination and Finger Localization

This monograph is an interesting and important study of the relationship of the brain to two specific forms of behavior of the human organism. It contains not only a survey and critical analysis of the literature but also an account of the author’s experience. The study of these phenomena—right-left discrimination and finger localization—goes back to Jules Badal (1888) and received a powerful stimulus from the paper of Gerstmann (1924). Since not only incompleteness of reports but also variations in method of examination make it often difficult to correlate the numerous cases published, the author gives his own methods of examination in the introduction, then, in chapters 2, 3, and 4, the detailed data on the normative aspects of right-left discrimination and of finger localization. “Typically the 6- or 7-year-old child is able to distinguish between the right and left side of his own body but shows defective appreciation of the