Effects of an Occupational Therapy Hand Dominance Transfer Intervention for Soldiers With Crossed Hand-Eye Dominance

ABSTRACT

Crossed dominance (CD) is defined as an individual's dominant hand and dominant eye being on opposite sides of the body. CD negatively impacts an individual's ability to accurately aim and fire long-barreled guns. The authors developed and evaluated a hand dominance transfer (HDT) intervention to improve the M16 rifle shooting accuracy, efficiency, and skill transfer. Twenty-four U.S. Army soldiers with CD were taught how to handle and fire an M16 rifle using the nondominant hand. Training was conducted at a military, indoor laser-equipped weapons simulator. Accuracy for shooting 40 rounds at baseline with the nondominant eye and dominant hand (NDE/DH) was 22.12 compared to shooting 30.46 with the dominant eye and nondominant hand (DE/NDH). This difference was statistically significant with p = .000. The transfer of shooting accuracy skill (retention) following the HDT intervention was 33.42 with a comparative p value of .100. Efficiency of shooting 10 rounds at baseline with the NDE/DH was 6.3 compared to shooting 7.3 with the DE/NDH. This difference was not statistically significant (p = .107). The transfer of shooting efficiency skill (retention) was 7.96 with a comparative p value of .349. This study supports shooting with the DE/NDH. HDT could be further developed to address the soldiering skill of shooting an M16.

Keywords:

• handedness
• knowledge of results
• lateralization
• learning

Acknowledgements

Special thanks are extended to the staff at the Joint Base San Antonio EST 2000 for providing their facilities, adjusting their schedules, and creating a customized test for the purposes of this study. Two Army OTs, Captains Amelia Wilson and Laura Dy, also must be acknowledged for their time and valuable feedback during the pilot test of this intervention. The authors thank Dr. John Ward for providing assistance with statistical analysis.