The home handedness questionnaire: pilot data from preschoolers

ABSTRACT

While handedness questionnaires are widely used in adults, there is no comparable measure designed specifically for children. The current study developed the Home Handedness Questionnaire (HHQ), a new measure for preschoolers administered by parents using common household items. The HHQ has two scales that distinguish action types typically combined on other measures: actions performed with only the right or left hand (i.e., unimanual, such as holding a toothbrush), and actions performed with one hand holding the object for the other hand’s action (i.e., role-differentiated bimanual manipulation or RDBM, such as unscrewing a lid from a jar). The HHQ was able to detect right preference, left preference, and no preference for unimanual and RDBM actions in a proof of concept study in 3-year-olds (N = 64). The HHQ identified a majority of children as right-handed, but was also sensitive to variability in direction across skill types. Approximately one-quarter of children in the sample had mixed preferences for the two types of manual skills, suggesting that for a subgroup of children, hand use patterns may still be undergoing change. Suggestions for refining the HHQ are discussed. Overall, the HHQ is a promising multidimensional parent-led tool for assessing preschool handedness.

KEYWORDS:

• Handedness
• hand preference
• lateralization
• preschoolers
• questionnaire

Acknowledgments

We thank Michael Corballis and George Michel for their valuable input on the project. Portions of these data were presented at the 2017 AIUM Annual Convention and the 27th World Congress on Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Eliza L. Nelson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0058-8409

Sandy L. Gonzalez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3498-0943

Jose M. El-Asmar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7749-1045

M. Fouad Ziade http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6663-3861

Reem S. Abu-Rustum http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8427-7351

Additional information

Funding

SLG was supported during the preparation of the manuscript by National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) [grant number R25GM061347]. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).