Do left-handed children have advantages regarding school performance and leadership skills?

Abstract

A handedness polymorphism exists in all human populations so far investigated, at least since the Palaeolithic. Handedness is a heritable trait, and a possible evolutionary explanation for the higher prevalence of right-handers is the association of left-handedness with some deleterious traits. In this context, the persistence of left-handers remains unexplained. Reproductive success has been shown to be dependent on cultural success in many human societies. This study is the first attempt to consider the importance of social status to evolutionary processes related to handedness. We conducted a survey in French public primary schools to look for a possible association between laterality, school performance, and leadership skills. This study revealed only weak associations, and a sex effect. For primary-school girls, we report a negative association between several indicators of left-sidedness and teacher's ratings of school performance and leadership skills. For primary-school boys, we report a positive association between left-handedness for writing and teacher's ratings of school performance. The present study did not reveal any strong relation between laterality and school performance, but has shown that general school performance is not independent of laterality, and that the effect is opposite in males and females. The main difficulty is now to define clearly the different intellectual functions involved.

No Association between Music Ability and Hand Preference in Children

“…Post Campus, 720 Northern Boulevard, Brookville, NY 11548, USA. e-mail: joseph.piro@liu.edu J. Piro & C. Ortiz study (Faurie, Vianey-Liaud, & Raymond, 2006;Sommer, Aleman, Somers, Boks, & Kahn, 2008;Thilers, MacDonald, & Herlitz, 2007). We also sought to shed light on whether handedness could be associated with domain expertise, as has been proposed in other research, and what this may signal about future expertise in a specific talent domain (Annett & Manning, 1989;Calnan & Richardson, 1976;Casey, Pezaris, & Nuttall, 1992;Crow, Crow, Done, & Leask, 1998;Dellatolas et al, 2003;Martino & Winner, 1995;Min, Shin, & Oh, 1996;Neils & Aram, 1986;Piro, 1993Piro, , 1998Szeszko, Madden, & Piro, 1997).…”

Handedness Predicts Social Preferences: Evidence Connecting the Lab to the Field

“…Goldberg et al (1994) find that left-handedness is associated with novelty-seeking, again particularly in males. Looking at several measures of school performance and leadership skills, Faurie et al (2006) find a positive association with left-handedness for boys but a negative one for girls and Sanders et al (1982) find the same pattern for spatial ability.…”

Small shifts in handedness bias during the Early Mesolithic? A reconstruction inferred from Microburin technology in the eastern Italian Alps

“…By extensions, this practice may create an important selective pressure on handedness patterns within given populations (Michel and Harkins, 1985). However, even though studies of manipulative tasks in traditional societies have revealed that some individuals show socially-mediated functional specialization (e.g., Faurie et al, 2005Faurie et al, , 2006, it is commonly assumed that males are more prevalently left-handed. This higher incidence of male lefthandedness in present-day populations has been variously explained as the result of pathology, neurological disorders or trauma (Bakan, 1971;Bishop, 1984).…”