Assessment of handedness and footedness by lateral preference inventory

 

Dr. Susie Jeyalyn David¹*, Dr. S. Rajasankar²

¹Ph.D Scholar (Medical Anatomy), Bharath University, Selaiyur, Chennai -73, India

²Professor, Department of Anatomy, Velammal Medical College and Hospital, Madurai, Tamilnadu, India

 

ABSTRACT:

Handedness is considered as the most obvious type of behavioral and cognitive asymmetry reported in human beings. Also we have footedness in the motor domain. This study investigated the percentage distribution and their significance for handedness and footedness in both sexes of adolescent age group in both left and right handers based on laterality preference inventory. Handedness got a significant result whereas footedness score has no significance based on the laterality preference inventory.

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

Handedness is the most obvious type of cognitive and behavioural asymmetry reported in human beings. It refers to the preference to perform several tasks with one hand rather than the other. Also, the brain mechanism underlying handedness is such that handedness is contralaterally related to the two hemispheres, left hand to the RH and right hand to the LH. There is evidence that left- and right-handers differ when compared on a variety of behavioural measures¹. Generally, right-handers are more homogeneous than left-handers on behavioural measures, as they are more likely to prefer the righthand for manual activities, to be more dexterous and powerful with the right-hand, and to have language lateralized to the contralateral left cerebral hemisphere. Thus, in right-handers the neural systems that contribute to these behaviours are lateralized predominantly to the LH, and the hand used to write is contralateral to the hemisphere mediating language functions. In contrast, in most lefthanders language is ipsilateral to the preferred hand. About 60% of left-handers have LH dominant for language.

 

Also it is quite often to see that the left handers are dissociated from the society due to the cultural skill habits which predominantly visions right handed behavior as a token of discipline, mannerism and moral attitude². Early research activities have documented that in many non-western cultures the prevalence of right handedness is greater than that found in the Western cultures³. Functional asymmetries in healthy individuals are often inferred from the performance asymmetries on central (direct) and peripheral (indirect) measures. Further, these measures vary in the degree of involvement of responses at perceptual and motor levels. The central measures operating at the perceptual level mainly tap the biases in visual, auditory, and tactual modalities. The central measures operating at the motor level include physiological measures such as Electromyography and Galvanic Skin Response. The peripheral measures of asymmetry in the perceptual domain involve preference measures of eyedness, earedness, and conjugate lateral eye movement (CLEM), and in the motor domain the preference and performance measures of handedness and footedness. These diverse measures assess laterality in disparate ways. Among these various measures of understanding the implications of hemispheric asymmetry, hand preference analysis has proved to be prominent and has gained importance amongst the researchers⁴.

Handedness has several concerns with allocation of activity at the work places in lines of performance ability. This is important because the environment and various gadgets and instruments are often organized in favour of right-handed people. Handedness, however, has been approached from the perspective of preference as well as performance. While performance measures are behavioural and objective, the preference measures involve self reports and are primarily based on memory.

 

It has been commented that the incidence of left-handedness is more in males than in females ⁵. It was also stated that the left-handedness was more in the younger age group than in the older adults. A study on foot overlapping (leg crossing) in German samples ⁶ concluded that 62% of the population were right leg crossers, 26% were left leg crossers and that 12% were ambilateral. Foot overlapping is correlated to some extent with footedness and handedness. Digital interlocking, arm folding and handedness have a place in human biology, far beyond their possible uses in genetics and in population comparisons as they are directly related to the cerebral voluntary control actions and hence are most important in the investigation of brain disorders.

 

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

A sample of 210 student volunteers were selected from various schools for the study. They were selected in such a way that the sample for our study consisted of equal number of right handed and left handed volunteers. Sample selection was based on Systematic random sampling method.

 

Inclusion criteria:

1. Consenting individuals both male and female between 11- 17 years.

2. Consenting right handers matching to left handers were rolled in.

 

Exclusion criteria:

1. Individuals having any gross deformity were excluded

2. Individuals who cannot give consent to participate in the study.

 

The parents of these volunteers were informed about the intended study, its procedures and consent was also obtained from the parents of each volunteer before inclusion in this protocol, which received the approval of the Institutional Human Ethics Committee.

 

Handedness and footedness were assessed by Lateral Preference Inventory⁷. The Lateral Preference Inventory is a brief, 16-item questionnaire, which validly measures hand, foot, eye, and ear preference

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:

Table-1: Percentage distribution for Handedness score between Left and Right handers (LPI)

 

40.9% of male left handers had the maximum score -4.

38.5% of female left handers had the maximum score -4.

37.8% of male right handers had the maximum score +4.

38.5% of female right handers had the maximum score +4.

In both left and right handers male students showed a higher percentage for handedness score.

 

Handedness score for left handers was not significant P>0.05

Handedness score for right handers was not significant P>0.05

Handedness score when considered for both left and right handers was highly significant P<0.001

 

Table-2 Percentage distribution for Footedness score in Left handers (LPI)

 

Table-3 Percentage distribution for Footedness score in right handers (LPI)

 

Among the left handers, 71.2% of males used their left foot whereas 28.8% used their left foot; In females 74.3% were left footed and 25.7% were left footed. In both sexes footedness scores were not significant P>0.05

Among the right handers, 95.5% of males used their right foot whereas only 4.5% used their left foot; In females 89.7% were right footed and 10.3% were left footed. In both sexes footedness scores were not significant P>0.05

 

While there are a number of self-report inventories for the measurement of handedness⁸, very few questionnaires have been developed that can provide a quick, valid measure of all four indexes of lateral preference: Handedness, footedness, eyedness and earedness. A series of behaviorally validated items have been gathered together to form the Lateral Preference Inventory (LPI), which is a brief but valid and reliable measure of hand, foot, eye, and ear preference. Data are simply scored for each four item scale as (R—L), where R is the number of “right” responses and L is the number of “left”. This means that we have scales that go from -4 to 4, with -4 meaning consistent left-sidedness and 4 meaning consistent right-sidedness for any index. A score of zero would indicate ambilaterality. Using the simple left-right dichotomy (cutting at 0, with LPI = 0, included with the lefts), females are more likely to be right-handed [90.8% vs. 88.2%; x 2 (l) = 5.99, p < .05]. Females are also more often right-footed (88.9% vs. 83.9%; x 2 (l) = 17.63, p < .001) ⁷.

 

During the onset of hemispherical asymmetry analysis, researchers postulated that there is a direct correspondence between all the features: handedness, footedness, eyedness⁹. But in fact studies show that there is an ipsilateral correlation among these features. Also it showed the correlation of handedness with the different parameters. Left handed females showed a 20% tendency of using the right foot. Right footed females had a 98.8% chance of using the right hand. Left footed females had a 100% chance of using the left hand. Left handed males had a 50% chance of using the right foot. Left footed males had a 50% chance of using the right hand. Both males and females showed a significant correlation between handedness and foot preference (P<0.001). A difference of opinion on this matter was indicated in the study on the foot and eye preference in adults, their relationship with the hand, sex and age ¹⁰. There is a higher proportion of crossed hand-foot preference in men than in women. Most importantly cross dominance favours sports persons lending them with additional skill sets which is of prime importance to the sports flavour ¹¹. Cultural moralization too forces the behavior related to handedness with the feminine gender affected the most, to follow right handedness.

 

Results from the tapping, pegboard events using monozygotic twins reports that there is strong deviation in performing activities with right and left hands, the right-handers being more strongly lateralized than left-handers¹².

 

It is also found that there is a direct correlation between the preference and its performance which is quite significant with the young adults¹³. Peters argued that preference induces asymmetry in a given skill as a result of increased use of the preferred hand¹⁴. However, hemispheric specialization has also been implicated. Thus, rapid finger tapping has shown right hand advantage which is attributed to LH specialization for the organization and control of sequential movement¹⁵. Right hand advantage in performance has been attributed to the fact that LH is superior in timing the forces involved in accelerating and decelerating the movement. This view goes well with the work on aiming as well as the studies showing right hand advantage in rapid finger tapping¹⁶; finger sequencing¹⁷ and throwing ¹⁸. Few researchers have found that aiming asymmetries in favour of right hand became more pronounced as the task demands have increased. It reflects LH’s precision in the timing of muscle contraction and information processing proficiencies ¹⁹.

 

CONCLUSION:

The extent of hand-preference is likely to influence performance asymmetry of both hand and foot. The consistent left- and right handers would show strong lateralization and consequently more pronounced motor asymmetries in performance. The peripheral preference measures include self-reported endorsement of the use of long limbs like hand and foot, and sensory receptors like eye and ear. It is hoped that the normative data provided here may prove to be a useful indication of the distribution of lateral preference in adolescents. We need multitask framework to explore the hemispheric asymmetries

 

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Accepted on 12.07.2017            © RJPT All right reserved