Cognitive benefits of right-handedness: A meta-analysis

Somers, Metten; Shields, Laura; Boks, Marco P.; Kahn, René S.; Sommer, Iris

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.01.003

Cited by 88 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…The absence of significant effects of handedness on braille reading, a complex process that presupposes both effective spatial skills and language abilities, does not confirm recent meta-analytic data suggesting that right-handed braille readers may have an advantage due to their slightly better spatial skills (Somers et al 2015). Finally, the present results do not support the assumption that the left hand is more accurate in braille reading, because it is more sensitive than the right hand (Hermelin and O'Connor 1971;Rudel et al 1974).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Handedness and Blindness on Braille Reading Accuracy

Vlachos

Argyropoulos

Papadimitriou

2017

Adv Neurodev Disord

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Research results with regard to handedness and braille reading performance are contradictory. The present study investigated (a) the effects of handedness on braille reading performance in people with blindness (or severe visual impairment) and (b) the potential effects of vision loss (or type) of blindness on braille reading. Forty-nine (27 males and 22 females) aged 8 to 27 years participated in three braille reading accuracy tasks with a subset of a standardized instrument, which evaluated reading accuracy in Greek language. Handedness was defined through a modified version of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory. The analysis showed that handedness was not significantly related to any task of braille reading accuracy. Level of vision loss was found to play an important role in reading accuracy, favoring the participants with blindness regardless of hand preference. The results may add to the literature by providing evidence that it is possible for braille-reading students to incorporate both hands in reading, regardless of which hand is dominant.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, a recent meta-analysis which investigated the association of verbal and spatial abilities in relation with handedness revealed that there is a small but significant cognitive advantage of right-handedness on spatial ability. However, in the verbal domain, this advantage is only significant in children (Somers et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Handedness and Blindness on Braille Reading Accuracy

Vlachos

Argyropoulos

Papadimitriou

2017

Adv Neurodev Disord

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“…From the 144 participants, selfreport established that eight participants (4 females, 4 males) were left-handed, and 136 participants were right-handed. It should be noted that although it has been shown that handedness can affect mental rotation performance (Somers, Shields, Boks, Kahn, & Sommer, 2015), the number of left-handers was too small to allow meaningful comparisons, and pursuing this question would move the focus away from our main topic. Accordingly, we have not included hand preference as a factor in our analyses.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Rotation with Egocentric and Object-Based Transformations

Voyer

Jansen

Kaltner

2017

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Two experiments were conducted to address methodological issues with past studies investigating the influence of egocentric and object-based transformations on performance and sex differences in mental rotation. In previous work, the egocentric and object-based mental rotation tasks confounded the stimulus type (embodied vs. non-embodied) and transformation task (egocentric vs. objectbased). In both experiments presented here, the same stimuli were used regardless of the type of transformation but task instructions were modified to induce either egocentric (left-right judgment) or object-based (same-different judgment) processing. Experiment 1 used pairs of letters whereas Experiment 2 presented pairs of line-drawings of human hands. For both experiments, it was hypothesized that the mental rotation slope for response time would be steeper for object-based than for egocentric transformations. This hypothesis was verified in both experiments. Furthermore, Experiment 2 showed a reduced male advantage for egocentric compared to object-based rotations, whereas this pattern was reversed for Experiment 1. In conclusion, the present study showed that the influence of the type of transformation involved in mental rotation can be examined with the same set of stimuli simply by modifying task instructions. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…How handedness interacts with intelligence (or the different cognitive abilities that together manifest themselves as an individual's general intelligence) is still a matter of ongoing investigation (for a review see Somers et al, 2015). Studies using general population samples have reported reduced levels of cognitive ability in left-handers (e.g., Nicholls et al, 2010Nicholls et al, , 2012Resch et al, 1997), elevated levels of cognitive ability in left-handers (e.g., McManus and Mascie-Taylor, 1983), or have failed to find any differences between left-and right-handers (e.g., Hardyck and Petrinovich, 1977;Hardyck et al, 1976).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%