Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice

Despite an overall body symmetry, human behavior is full of examples of asymmetry, from writing or gesturing to kissing and cradling. Prior research has revealed that theatre patrons show a bias towards sitting on the right side of a movie theatre. Two competing theories have attempted to explain th...

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Main Authors:	Harms, Victoria L., Poon, Lisa J. O., Smith, Austen K., Elias, Lorin J.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4538291/

id	pubmed-4538291
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45382912015-09-07 Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice Harms, Victoria L. Poon, Lisa J. O. Smith, Austen K. Elias, Lorin J. Neuroscience Despite an overall body symmetry, human behavior is full of examples of asymmetry, from writing or gesturing to kissing and cradling. Prior research has revealed that theatre patrons show a bias towards sitting on the right side of a movie theatre. Two competing theories have attempted to explain this seating asymmetry: one posits that expectation of processing demand drives the bias; the other posits that basic motor asymmetries drive the bias. To test these theories we assessed the real-world classroom seating choices of university students using photographs. A bias for students to choose seats on the left side of the classroom was observed, in contrast to the right side bias observed in theatre seating studies. These results provide evidence in support of a processing-expectation bias. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-08-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4538291/ /pubmed/26347639 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00457 Text en Copyright © 2015 Harms, Poon, Smith and Elias. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Harms, Victoria L. Poon, Lisa J. O. Smith, Austen K. Elias, Lorin J.
spellingShingle	Harms, Victoria L. Poon, Lisa J. O. Smith, Austen K. Elias, Lorin J. Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
author_facet	Harms, Victoria L. Poon, Lisa J. O. Smith, Austen K. Elias, Lorin J.
author_sort	Harms, Victoria L.
title	Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
title_short	Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
title_full	Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
title_fullStr	Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
title_full_unstemmed	Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
title_sort	take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice
description	Despite an overall body symmetry, human behavior is full of examples of asymmetry, from writing or gesturing to kissing and cradling. Prior research has revealed that theatre patrons show a bias towards sitting on the right side of a movie theatre. Two competing theories have attempted to explain this seating asymmetry: one posits that expectation of processing demand drives the bias; the other posits that basic motor asymmetries drive the bias. To test these theories we assessed the real-world classroom seating choices of university students using photographs. A bias for students to choose seats on the left side of the classroom was observed, in contrast to the right side bias observed in theatre seating studies. These results provide evidence in support of a processing-expectation bias.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4538291/
_version_	1613260252067659776

Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice

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