A survey of sidedness in Northern Irish schoolchildren: The interaction of sex, age, and task

Abstract

The study examined lateral preference in use of hands, feet, eyes, and ears in a group of nearly 5000 schoolchildren in Northern Ireland. Performance tests were carried out by student teachers during their school-based work in 2002 and data were submitted on-line. Six tasks were used-writing, throwing a ball, kicking a ball, hopping, listening to quiet sounds, and looking through a cardboard tube. There was right bias in every task but the extent of it differed between tasks. Males were generally less right biased than females, and younger children less than older ones; for hearing, the changes with age were markedly different in the two sexes, with females showing a strong increase in right bias but males showing none. These observational results do little to illuminate the reasons for the patterns observed.

Sobre a relação entre filogenia e ontogenia no desenvolvimento da lateralidade na infância

“…No jardim de infância a proporção de crianças com modificação da preferência para mão direita foi de 42%, enquanto que entre a quarta e sexta séries este valor atingiu 71%. Parte das crianças que se converteram a destras passaram a preferir a mão direita particularmente para escrever e se alimentar, o que eram os comportamentos mais deseja-dos pelos seus cuidadores (ver também Greenwood, Greenwood, McCullagh, Beggs, & Murphy, 2007;Porac, Coren, & Searleman, 1986). De forma complementar, têm sido apresentadas evidências de que a consistência de preferência lateral em indivíduos destros é maior em crianças mais velhas e na adolescência do que em fases iniciais da infância (Coren, Porac, & Duncan, 1981;Leconte & Fagard, 2006) e maior em idosos em comparação a adultos jovens (Teixeira, 2008).…”

The bi-pedal ape: Plasticity and asymmetry in footedness

“…The few performance tasks in the literature are often criticised because they are either rather arbitrary or are confounded with practice based on experience such as handwriting (see Calvert and Bishop, 1998 for review). We have examined performance on the pitch in terms of foot use -which arguably includes some elements of both preference and performance (Carey et al 2001; also see Greenwood, Greenwood, McCullaugh, Beggs & Murphy, 2007).…”

“…The few performance tasks in the literature are often criticised because they are either rather arbitrary or are confounded with practice based on experience such as handwriting (see Calvert and Bishop, 1998 for review). We have examined performance on the pitch in terms of foot use -which arguably includes some elements of both preference and performance (Carey et al 2001; also see Greenwood, Greenwood, McCullaugh, Beggs & Murphy, 2007).A few tasks designed to assess hand preference in a behavioural fashion involve picking up objects placed across the workspace; the more "one-handed" the participant, the further s/he will reach with their preferred hand, in spite of the proximity of the target to the non-preferred hand (e.g. Bishop, Ross, Daniels and Bright, 1996;Bryden, Singh, Steenhuis and Clarkson, 1994).…”

Hora de balanço

“…77, 78). É importante referir que, apesar da diminuição da pressão social sobre o uso da mão esquerda, assistese ainda a alguma estigmatização quando esta é a preferida em detrimento da direita para as várias tarefas da vida diária, entre as quais se destaca claramente a escrita (42,47) . Os estudos que analisam a preferência manual ao longo da vida demonstram que a percentagem de sinistrómanos diminui com o avançar da idade, sendo drasticamente sub-representada nos idosos (79)(80)(81)(82) .…”