Lateral preferences and their assessment in school-aged children

Abstract

A behaviour-based lateral preference instrument (the Lateral Preferences Questionnaire; LPQ; Van Strien, 1992, 2001) was administered to a large sample of school-aged children. The aims of the present study were twofold: (i) to evaluate the factor structure and the psychometric properties of the LPQ, and (ii) to evaluate the effects of age, gender, and mean level of parental education on lateral preferences and lateral consistency. Two factor models had an excellent fit with the data. In the first model the LPQ items were considered to be indicators of four different lateral preference factors (the hand, foot, eye, and ear preference factors). In the second model the LPQ items were considered to be indicators of four lateral preference factors, which were in turn expected to load on a single underlying general lateral preference factor. The psychometric properties of the derived hand and eye preference scales of the LPQ were good to excellent, and the psychometric properties of the foot and ear preference scales were acceptable. Lateral preferences and lateral consistency were not affected by age, gender, or mean level of parental education.

Keywords:

• Hand preference
• Foot preference
• Eye preference
• Ear preference
• Assessment
• School-aged children

Notes

¹The discrepancy between both internal consistency measures is related to the fact that Cronbach's alpha values are a function of the height of the intercorrelations between the items on a scale, as well as the number of items on that scale (Clark & Watson, 1995). Thus a scale that contains a relatively large number of items can have a high Cronbach's alpha value even when the items are only moderately intercorrelated.