Assessing handedness in pre-schoolers: Construction and initial validation of a hand preference test for 4-6-year-olds

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a test for measuring the handedness of pre-school children. The newly developed test consists of 14 activities for checking various aspects of hand preference and was administered to a Viennese sample of 120 children of the ages 4 to 6.5 (18 left-handed, 17 ambidextrous and 85 right-handed). For the purpose of validation, the handedness of the children was assessed via a questionnaire given to parents, observation of the hand used to draw and testing of visual-motor skills as well as general level of development using the Viennese Development Test (WET, Kastner-Koller & Deimann, 2002). The hand preference test proved to be reliable (α=0.97). The inter-correlations of the handedness measures gathered (parent’s estimate as well as observation of drawing hand) with the hand preference test substantiates the concurrent validity of the procedure. Right-handers exhibited the most pronounced hand preference; while the hand use of left-handers was significantly less lateralized. Irrespective of the direction of handedness, children with a consistent hand preference had higher total development scores than children with inconsistent use, i.e. frequent changes in hand used for a specific activity. Compared to ambidextrous and right-handed children, lefthanders achieved significantly lower scores in the field of visual-motor skills. The results highlight the necessity of a reliable method for differentiated measurement of handedness as early as pre-school.