Changes of the relationship between hand preference and writing hand over time

, Vol 24. No 2. pp 301 303. 1986 0028 3932/86 $300 + 000

Prmted In Great Bnlam i l'86 Pergamon Press Lid

NOTE

CHANGES OVER TIME IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HAND

PREFERENCE AND WRITING HAND AMONG LEFT-HANDERS

l ! l N .1 Bi l KI l A A R * t and PlETER M. KROONFNBFRC.J

•Medical Oay Care Centre for Children. "Kabouterhuis West" JDepartmenl of Education. Umversity of Leiden. Leiden. The NetlierlaiuN

Abstract In a cross-scchonal Dutch sample the percentage of Icll-hantiers w r i l i n g with their left hand mcreased from ()"„ lor people of 40 yr and over. to 100",, for 14 yr olds and younger. The iniphcalions of this rcsult for the use of writmg hand as an index for handedness are discussed. and causes for this phenomcnon are bnefly explored.

INTRODUCTION

IN A RFCFNT study ROSZKOWSKI cl til. (12] found that the writmg hand was the best single predictor for hand preference in a group of elementary school children Similarly in studies by WHITF and ASHTON [15] and BRYI>I N [3J, 'writing' had the highest factor loading on the factor hand preference. Furthermore, MrMANUS [8] presumed t h a t "the best measure of an individuars calegory is his or hor writmg hand. since this mcasure h.is ihc slrongest l a t c r a h l N score" (p 14) On the ot her hand. BFUKFI A AR and KR(X)\FNBFRC; [ I] found that for left-handers 'writmg' had onc of (hè lowest ileiii-lolal correlations of the 51 items under mvestigation

ROS/KOWSKI [personal communication. 1983] suggested (hal these differences might be explamed by inlolorance with respect to lefl-handod writing possihK slill persisting in the Netherlands. hut not elsewhere Altcrnativcly. it might be explamed hy a total change in attitude lowards lefl-handcd writmg m the past Such a change woulcl h a \ o ils elTccls on the results of BFUKFI AAR .md KROOM \ H F K < ; | l ] as t h e > anal>sed data of subjects bet ween 6 and 81 yr old, but not on other imestig.itions as these gcnerally suidiod homogeneous age groups ROS/KOWSM a ui \ 12] studiod school children. BRYDFN [3] undergraduates, and WHITE and ASHTON [15] psychologv s i u d c n i s

Aflotber explanation could be t h e c u l t u r a H o r national)dilïerences in the samples ROSZKOWSKI et ui [ 13] have

pomted out that i u l i i n . i l influences probabh operatc on t h o shift m wrilmg hand m particular LFVY [7. p l')h] rcmarked that handedness ilsell is nuoeptibk to cultural influences. especially il' il is detincd b\ wnting hand In addition. educational practices do not develop the same way in all countnes. and the Beukelaar and Kroonenberg study is the only one to use Dutch subjects

The sim of the present nole is to report the results ol'another Dutch sample for which the rclationship between writmg hand and hand preference o\er agc was cxamincd

METHODS

The analysis reportcd here is based on u group of !')% repondents among which 331 were self-professcd left-handers. In l1)?1), the questionnaire was mailed lo approx VX)0 per>ons from tilcs of \olunteers who agreed to participatcinoneormorcscientiricsurveysper year(see [4] and [5]) Their ages ranged from 4 t o K f t y r (theoldest left-hander w a s hS \ i old) The piesent analysis is hased on the following questions "Which hand do you use for writmg''", "Are you left-handed or nghl-handed1'" and "When wcre you horn''" Othcr analyses of t h e complete questionnaire are m preparalion

RESULTS

Three of the 331 lefl-handers (born in 1941. 1953 and 1956. respectively) mdicated thai ihey could wrne equally w e l l w i t h both hands The relationship between ycar of birth and percentage of left-h.mders writmj; w i t h thcir left hand is given m Tablc l Visual inspection shows t h a t among left-handers who were born after 1939 the

302 Non

T.ible l Preferred w n t i n g hand of lelt handers ordcred hy ycar of birth Percentage writing with the lelt hand Ve.ir of birth N Overall l erna Ie Male

1910 1919 1920 1929 19 V) 19» 1940 1944 1945 1949 1950 I9S4 1955 1959 1960 1964 1965 1969 1970 1974 1975 1979 7 27 V) 15

37

J3

83

38

W

percentage nght-handed wntmgdecreascd rapidly As ca n heseen Trom t hè t a b l e t h is et'l eet is independent ot sex As an uside. u is intercsting to note that all but one ol' the 1661 selt-protessed nght-handers usc their right hand lor wnting.

DISCUSSION

l-rorn l a bic l it ca n bescen t h a t . irrespectiveol sex. lor student s or a n v sample of persons under 30 yr t h e r e e x i s l s .1 ne.irpcrlei;t relat lonship bet ween hand prel'crence and wnt ing hand. m our sampleonly one out ol'94left-handcrs wrotc with her right hand. Thus it is clear from the present data that undergraduate students are not necessanly reprcsentative of the total population ol a country SimilarK. suppose that one had conducted research wit h a group ofelderly people. no relationship betwcen hand preference and wnting hand would have been found. Fherclore. it seems that it is of prime importanccto takeagc int o account when studymghand preference measurcd entirely or in part by the w n t i n g hand.

The reason for the shift m wnting hand is .dmosi certamly due to thanging educational attitudes tow.irds left-handed w n t i n g In the Nethcrlands the intlucnce ol'the Anglo-Saxon l i l e r a l u r e o n l lus issue increased considerably at'ter 1945 and L I V Y [6. p 133], reviewmg six pertinent studies, found that in the U S A tolerante louards left-handed wntmg had alrcady been increasmg from I 9 3 0 o n w a t d s 11 is. by t h e w a y . interest ing to note t h a t the shift in the Netherlands look only 20 yr to complete, as opposed to some 40 yr in the U.S A. BRACKI-NHIIX.I | 2] indicated that in Austraha and New Zealand the shift already starled around 1XXO. hut look a very long time to become complete Possihly the duration of the shift has something to do with the si/e of the country and/oi lts labour mobihty.

In research mto the relation bel ween hand preference and wnting hand. 'age cannot be handled uniformly in all countncs as is illustrated by a study of'l i N< , (/ ui | 141 m I aiwan They found that some 10 yr ago about 2X ",. ol' t heir sample (A/=4143) called themselves left-handed. while a mere 0.7",, used the left hand for writing. Statements hke the one by M( M A M is | X ]. cited in the introduction, should therefore not be accepled without additional q u a h l i c a t i o n s The hypothesis that with dccreasing age the percentage of left-handers w n t i n g with the left hand increases due to educational changes s c c m s t o b e m o r e p l a u s i b l e t h a n POR AC and C'om N 's [ l I. p. 1041 hypolhesisth.it t h i s relation is caused by our nght-handed world I f t h e i r hypothesis were truc our rcsults indicate that t h i s environmental c.uisc would take 13 yr to become at all eflective. i e only at theagc ol 19 yr Ihis mlluence becomesmeasurablegiven that w n t i n g has been learned at the age ol 6 yr Alter all. our questionnaire wasadmimstered in 1979. and only for 20 yr olds and over (born in 1955 and before) signilicant departurcs from 100",, Icft-handed wnting occur Similarly, after 40 yr the environment would have succeeded in converting all left-handers to wnling with thcir right h.ind Such an overwhelming and perlect penetration of the environment scems hardly likely.

Examintng 34 20th century studies, PORAC and COREN [l l, p. 101] failed to find a correlation between the date of a study and the percentage ofleft-ha miers This ca n. however. only be laken as evidente ag.unst our Imdings il' m all studies the writing hand was used as sole cntcnon for detcrmining hundcdness l lus is. however. not the case as most authors used more indices to determme handedness. Even though there is some evidence that forced nght-handed writing influences other stmilar actions (BEUKELAAR and KRONENBERG [1], LEVY [6]) this effect is apparently not strong enough to affect the percentage left-handers over the years.

Non 303 Unfortunately we are not able to check other relationships with the writmg hand. such as those found between rehgion, size of hirlh place and writing hand hy PAVNI [9. 10]

REFERENCES

1. BUJKH AAR. L. J. and KROONI-.NBFRG. P M Towardsa concept ualization of handpreference. Br. J Pm-hol. 74, 33 45, 1983.

2. BRACKENRIDOE, C. J Secular vanalion in handedness over ninety years. Neuropsychologia 19, 459-462, 1981. 3. BRYDFN. M. P. Measuring handedness with questionnaires \ewop\\thiilonia 15. 617 624. 1977.

4. DSWO. Reapondentatbestand (DSV/O Brochure 3). DSWO. Leiden, 1979

5. DSWO. Ondenoek naar hel Leuke ReipintilenienhestniHl (DSWO Brochure 6) DSWO, Leiden. 19X0 6. LEVY. J. Psychobiological implications of bilateral asymmetry. In //<™/y>/;rn< I-HIK li/m in the Hiimiin Bram,

S J. DIMOND and J. G. BEAUMONT (Editors). Elek Science, London, 1974.

7. LKVY. J. Theoriginsof lateral asymmetry. In Lali-raliuiimii in the \, n<n<\ \\ \u-nt. S 11 .\RN\RD. R W Don L GOI.DSTEIN, J. JAYNES. and G K R A I I I I A M I R (Editors) Academie Press. London. 1977

8. McMANUS. l. C. Right- and left-hand skill: failure of the righl shift model Br J /'vtr/W. 76 l 16. 19S5 9. PAYNF. M. Incidence of left-handedness for wnting J. Cross-Culiunil /'VK/IO/. 12, 233 239. 1981. 10. PAYNE, M. Attitudes towards use of the left hand for writmg: a pilot study in Nigeria. Nigeria Educ. Forum 4,

164 172. 19X1

11 PORAC. C. and COREN. S. Lateral Preferente umi Human Behanor, Springer Verlag. New York, 19X1 12. ROSZKOWSKI. M. J.. SACKS. R and SNEIBECKER. G. E. Young children's siihiective repoiis of ni.inual

preference: internal consistency and theselection of the most representative activnx on the basis of item-total correlations. J clin Neun>ps\elu>l 4, 35 37. 1982.

13. ROSZKOWSKI. M. J.. SNELBECKER. G. E. and SACKS, R Children's. adolescents' and adults' report of hand preference: homogeneity and discnminating power of selected tasks. Clin \cnr,>/t\\ihi>l 3,199 213. I9M 14. TENG. E L., LEE. P.-H.. YANG. K.-S. andCHANG. P. C Handedness m a Chinese populationrbiological, social.

and pathological factors. Science 193, 114X l 150. 1976.