Knowing whether an individual prefers the left or right hand for skilled activities is important to researchers in experimental psychology and neuroscience. The current study reports on a new measure of skilled hand preference derived from the Provins and Cunliffe (1972) handedness inventory. Undergraduates (n = 3324) indicated their lateral preference for their hands, feet, eyes and ears. A me...

Using a new agent-based model that mimics the learning process in hand-reaching behavior of individual mice, we show that mouse hand preference is probabilistic, dependent on the environment and prior learning. We quantify the learning capabilities of three inbred strains and show that population distributions of hand preference emerge from the properties of individual mice. The model informs o...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.09.008 0003-3472/© 2014 The Association for the Study of A Among the many hand preference studies on nonhuman primates, several have demonstrated the effect of diverse action demands on the direction and magnitude of hand preference. However, few studies have assessed hand preference in the natural repertoire of motor behaviours in nonhuman primates, esp...

Background The present study aimed to determine and confront hand preference (hand chosen in priority to perform a manual dexterity task) and hand dominance (hand with best motor performance) in eight macaques (Macaca fascicularis) and in 20 human subjects (10 left-handers and 10 right-handers). Methods Four manual dexterity tests have been executed by the monkeys, over several weeks during lea...

In the present study we investigate age-related changes in hand preference for grasping and the influence of task demands on such preference. Children (2-11), young-adults (17-28) and older-adults (57-90) were examined in a grasp-to-eat and a grasp-to-construct task. The end-goal of these tasks was different (eat vs. construct) as was the nature of the task (unimanual vs. bimanual). In both tas...

We surveyed 650 young adults to assess both their current handedness behaviors and past attempts to shift their hand preference. We found that 73 (11.2%) individuals had experienced hand preference change attempts and 52 (8.0%) had undergone pressure to switch hand preference to the right. The likelihood that an individual had experienced pressure to change hand use was not related significantl...

Hand preference is one of the most apparent functional asymmetry in humans. Under contralateral control, performance is more proficient with the preferred hand; however, the difference between the two hands is greater in right handers, considering left handers generally display less cerebral lateralization. One method of evaluating hand preference is Bishop's card reaching task; however, inform...