What Are Dominance Profiles and How Can They Be Used

I’d like to begin with a Paul MacLean quote from his book, The Triune Brain In Evolution: “If uniqueness were an indispensable requirement for an evolving society, every person would be indispensable.”

Unfortunately uniqueness is not something that we highly treasure in school yet it is what we most admire in our greats in all walks of life. In other words, there is a large disconnect in how our educational system treats those that learn differently.

Lateral dominance is our natural and innate way of learning from and processing information. Dominance Profiling is a technique for assessing a person’s learning style. Each of us has a preferred way of taking in and learning from the world. Understanding your child’s (or your own), learning characteristics can assist you to see why we each act and learn in certain ways especially when under stress. From this knowledge strategies can be developed to ensure your child will learn more effectively.

Our dominant, innate, basal patterns are especially valuable for understanding children in school. Yet they are also helpful to understand the behavior of adults when they are under stress. Knowing about and developing new strategies for learning enables a person to broaden and break free of the restrictions of their innate profile. Our dominance profile is based on our dominant brain hemisphere, eye, ear, hand and foot. This profile determines how we prefer to learn, perceive, and respond to the environment. As we take in new information especially when we are under stress, we access the senses which are ideally linked to our dominant brain hemisphere. This direct link is formed when our dominant eye, ear, hand, and foot is opposite our dominant brain hemisphere. When our dominant brain hemisphere is not opposite our dominant senses (as is true for many people) then learning is more difficult if different strategies are not used.

Learn how you can test your child for their Dominance Profile

Why Schools and Parents Need to Know About Dominance Profiles

Research shows that there is a huge and disheartening incongruity between unfavorable school instructional methods and the learning profiles of the majority of students. Schools have certain expectations about the ways students should learn. Student’s who fail to fit this profile are seen as inferior rather than viewed as learning differently.

Labels that are used in school systems like “Gifted and Talented” or “Special Education”, have a direct correlation to a child’s inherent dominance profiles. This incongruity is a major contributing factor in higher numbers of students with dominance profiles that don’t fit teaching methods being identified as ADD/ADHD, Dyslexic, and Emotional Behavioral challenges and other limiting labels. With no considerations or adjustments made to address normal differing profiles, children whose profiles don’t fit the set teaching methods will continue to appear less capable. The sad truth is however that only about 15% to 20% of the population ideally fit the typical teaching practices used in schools today.