Laterality and Its Role in Talent Identification and Athlete Development

Schorer, Jörg; Tirp, Judith; Steingröver, Christina; Baker, Joseph

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-801426-4.00005-5

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…At the senior level, an overrepresentation was particularly evident in foil, épée, and table tennis in both female and male competitions (Raymond et al, 1996;Loffing, 2017), whereas at the junior level, this was most evident in foil and épée (females and males) but also in male tennis. The finding of a left-hander overrepresentation at the junior level, which has vastly been neglected in previous research on a handednessrelated performance advantage so far (Schorer et al, 2016), provides new insight into the role handedness may play for performance and career development in these different sports. Albeit direct comparisons between the senior and junior findings may be limited, one tentative interpretation of the tennis data is that handedness might still be performance relevant at the junior level in male competition, but no longer stands out at the senior level.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Since based on the present data we can neither confirm that proposition nor exclude alternative explanations such as greater fighting distance in saber than épée and foil (Raymond et al, 1996 ), we refrain from speculating further about the potential underlying mechanisms and instead assign this as homework for more in-depth laterality research in fencing. Collectively, in light of the above considerations, it appears to have both theoretical importance and practical relevance to determine the potentially facilitating role laterality, and left-handedness in particular, may play during athletes' developmental pathway from junior to elite international senior competition in interactive sports (Schorer et al, 2016 ; Connor et al, 2019 , 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Handedness and Relative Age in International Elite Interactive Individual Sports Revisited

Loffing

Schorer

2021

Front. Sports Act. Living

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Relative age effects (RAE) describe the unintended side effect of annual age grouping such that athletes born close to a specific cutoff date are more likely to be associated with attaining higher performance status than athletes born later. One factor suggested to override the RAE is handedness. Given the left-handers' rarity and their proposed performance advantage in interactive sports, left-handedness may be associated with a lower likelihood of suffering from selection inequalities like RAE in those sports compared with right-handedness. Here, in a two-study approach, we tested that hypothesis by examining male and female athletes from various interactive individual sports sampled over a 10-year period from 2007 to 2016. Study 1 investigated distributions of birth and handedness of senior athletes listed in the top 200 of year-end world rankings in table tennis, tennis, squash, and fencing (épée, foil, and saber). Study 2 followed a similar design but focused on junior athletes in the fencing disciplines and tennis. Unlike the above prediction, in both studies, birth distribution was not found to be reliably associated with handedness in any of the sports or disciplines considered. Left-handers were consistently overrepresented in épée, foil, and table tennis, occasionally in saber and tennis, and not at all in squash. Birth frequencies decreased from quartile Q1 (January to March) to Q4 in almost any sporting domain at the junior level, whereas such trend was rarely found at the senior level. In conclusion, while providing novel insight on the role handedness may play at the junior level, our findings do not support the hypothesis that left-handedness helps override birth-related inequalities in high sporting achievement in elite interactive individual sports.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handedness and Relative Age in International Elite Interactive Individual Sports Revisited

Loffing

Schorer

2021

Front. Sports Act. Living

Self Cite

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“…Inconsistent handedness is prevalent in left-handers and, in sports performance, it has also been found that handedness is not consistently related to lateral motor preferences [105]. In addition, being left-handed conveys an advantage in some sports, and sports training that incorporates different lateral preferences, such as adopting a left-handed technique or becoming familiar with the left fighting stance, may enhance sporting success [106]. It appears possible that individuals with inconsistent handedness may respond more to such training, so that measuring inconsistent handedness may be useful for identifying sporting talent.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Footedness, Throwing Arm, and Handedness as Predictors of Eyedness Using Cluster Analysis and Machine Learning: Implications for the Origins of Behavioural Asymmetries

Rodway,

Schepman

2024

Symmetry

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Behavioural asymmetries displayed by individuals, such as hand preference and foot preference, tend to be lateralized in the same direction (left or right). This may be because their co-ordination conveys functional benefits for a variety of motor behaviours. To explore the potential functional relationship between key motor asymmetries, we examined whether footedness, handedness, or throwing arm was the strongest predictor of eyedness. Behavioural asymmetries were measured by self-report in 578 left-handed and 612 right-handed individuals. Cluster analysis of the asymmetries revealed four handedness groups: consistent right-handers, left-eyed right-handers, consistent left-handers, and inconsistent left-handers (who were left-handed but right-lateralized for footedness, throwing and eyedness). Supervised machine learning models showed the importance of footedness, in addition to handedness, in determining eyedness. In right-handers, handedness was the best predictor of eyedness, followed closely by footedness, and for left-handers it was footedness. Overall, predictors were more informative in predicting eyedness for individuals with consistent lateral preferences. Implications of the findings in relation to the origins and genetics of handedness and sports training are discussed. Findings are related to fighting theories of handedness and to bipedalism, which evolved after manual dexterity, and which may have led to some humans being right-lateralized for ballistic movements and left-lateralized for hand dexterity.

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“…For instance, the quality of developmental resources in an athlete's early environment is thought to drive the 'community size effect' [25]. Further, recent work on issues such as the 'Relative Age Effect' [26,27 ] and the 'Left-Hander Advantage' [28] reinforce the notion that athlete development is strongly affected by systemic biases in how talent is identified and selected (see Mann et al, this issue).…”

Section: Environmental Constraints On Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in athlete development: understanding conditions of and constraints on optimal practice

Baker

Young

2017

Current Opinion in Psychology

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Laterality and Its Role in Talent Identification and Athlete Development

Cited by 8 publications

References 48 publications

Handedness and Relative Age in International Elite Interactive Individual Sports Revisited

Handedness and Relative Age in International Elite Interactive Individual Sports Revisited

Exploring Footedness, Throwing Arm, and Handedness as Predictors of Eyedness Using Cluster Analysis and Machine Learning: Implications for the Origins of Behavioural Asymmetries

Advances in athlete development: understanding conditions of and constraints on optimal practice

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