Examining Variations Between Everyday Life Handedness and Lateral Preferences for Sport-Specific Skills in Children

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study aimed to analyze both sport-specific lateral preferences and handedness for everyday life tasks among school-aged children. Method: A total of 533 children (254 males and 279 females) aged 6 to 15 years old were assessed. Children’s handedness was determined according to the laterality score from Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI), while lateral preferences were assessed for 16 different sport-specific tasks. Results: The percentage of children with a left hand preference was lower for unilateral (10.5–14.3%) than for bilateral (19.5–31.7%) tasks. An increased prevalence of left-sided preference was also obtained for foot tasks (13.3–26.8%) and rotation along the vertical axis (28.5%). Similarly, hand preference for unilateral sport-specific tasks and EHI scores were largely correlated (r = 0.551–0.630), while these correlations were lower for bilateral hand tasks (r = 0.148–0.418), foot tasks (r = 0.201–0.386) and rotation preference (r = 0.129). Moreover, left-handed children evidenced less lateralized behavior for sport-specific tasks than right-handed children. Conclusions: The current study has shown that sport-specific lateral preferences and their correlations with handedness vary considerably depending on the task and individual characteristics in developmental ages. These findings emphasize the relevance of task-specific assessments of lateral preferences when looking at sports skills during childhood.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood
• laterality
• motor skills
• physical education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

IRB approval

The research procedures in this study were approved by the local Investigation Review Committee (CE-DCEC-UVIGO 2020-10-31-8449).

Additional information

Funding

This study has no funding.