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Impact on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Analysis of institutional authors

Ferrero MCorresponding AuthorVadillo MCorresponding Author

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Is crossed laterality associated with academic achievement and intelligence? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Publicated to:PLoS ONE. 12 (8): 467-e0183618 - 2017-08-28 12(8), DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183618

Authors: Ferrero, Marta; West, Gillian; Vadillo, Miguel A

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Abstract

Over the last century, sporadic research has suggested that people whose hand, eye, foot, or ear dominances are not consistently right- or left-sided are at special risk of suffering academic difficulties. This phenomenon is known as crossed laterality. Although the bulk of this research dates from 1960's and 1970's, crossed laterality is becoming increasingly popular in the area of school education, driving the creation of several interventions aimed at restoring or consolidating lateral dominance. However, the available evidence is fragmentary. To determine the impact of crossed laterality on academic achievement and intelligence, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of articles published since 1900. The inclusion criteria for the review required that studies used one or more lateral preference tasks for at least two specific parts of the body; they included a valid measure of crossed laterality; they measured the impact of crossed laterality on academic achievement or intelligence; and they included participants between 3 and 17 years old. The final sample included 26 articles that covered a total population of 3578 children aged 5 to 12. Taken collectively, the results of these studies do not support the claim that there is a reliable association between crossed laterality and either academic achievement or intelligence. Along with this, we detected important shortcomings in the literature, such as considerable heterogeneity among the variables used to measure laterality and among the tasks utilized to measure the outcomes. The educational implications of these results are discussed.

Keywords

Quality education

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal PLoS ONE due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2017, it was in position 15/64, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Multidisciplinary Sciences.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 1.99, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jun 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-06-01, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 11
  • Scopus: 14
  • Europe PMC: 3
  • Open Alex: 18
  • OpenCitations: 10

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-06-01:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 144.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 143 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 69.15.
  • The number of mentions on the social network Facebook: 5 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 93 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
  • Assignment of a Handle/URN as an identifier within the deposit in the Institutional Repository: https://repositorio.uam.es/handle/10486/717342
Continuing with the social impact of the work, it is important to emphasize that, due to its content, it can be assigned to the area of interest of ODS 4 - Quality Education, with a probability of 76% according to the mBERT algorithm developed by Aurora University.

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: United Kingdom.

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (FERRERO GONZALEZ, MARTA) and Last Author (VADILLO NISTAL, MIGUEL ANGEL).

the authors responsible for correspondence tasks have been FERRERO GONZALEZ, MARTA and VADILLO NISTAL, MIGUEL ANGEL.