A Show of Hands

    


    During a recent conversation with a colleague regarding the treatment plan for a client with severe upper-limb weakness post-stroke, we happened to be interchangeably using terms like "hand dominance", "hand preference", "handedness" and it felt quite jarring at the time.

    It kept bothering me all through the rest of the day and into the wee hours of the night. My feline companion, Clementine, seemed concerned as well. I decided to clear the air the next morning after several unsuccessful attempts to retire to bed and hopped on to our trusty generic search engines and scientific databases. I was quite shocked to see most studies used these terms synonymously, just like us! But I decided to dig deeper. Then lo and behold, I finally found what I was looking for! It just took most of an otherwise pleasant Sunday morning to find the answers to the most pressing question of my weekend. I'd have to disagree with Shakespeare on this, but the name is everything here.

    "Hand preference" is defined as the hand preferred for use during a specific manual dexterity task on instinct and without concern whether it is the most efficient one. Hand preference is an indication of cerebral lateralization and is associated with language. In contrast, "hand dominance" refers to the hand that exhibits the best motor performance by being more efficient in task execution. It has been found that hand preference generally corresponds with hand dominance in most people.

    "Handedness", although related to hand preference, refers to a uniquely human behaviour i.e. the preference for right-hand use in most tasks, and a historical bias against left-hand use in most cultures. Various tools are used to determine hand performance as explained in the works of Brown and colleagues.

    I hope this excerpt would help us all effectively communicate outcomes with our colleagues in the future. I pray that everyone has been staying safe during these testing times! Thanks for tuning in to this "Show of Hands".

References:

1. Chatagny P, Badoud S, Kaeser M, Gindrat AD, Savidan J, Fregosi M, et al. Distinction between hand dominance and hand preference in primates: a behavioural investigation of manual dexterity in nonhuman primates (macaques) and human subjects. Brain Behav. 2013; 3(5):575-95. doi: 10.1002/brb3.160.

2. Christman SD. Handedness. In: Encyclopedia of Human Behavior: Second Edition. Elsevier; 2012. p. 290–6.

3. Brown SG, Roy EA, Rohr LE, Snider BR, Bryden PJ. Preference and performance measures of handedness. Brain Cogn. 2004; 55(2):283-5. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2004.02.010.

4. Brown SG, Roy EA, Rohr LE, Bryden PJ. Using hand performance measures to predict handedness. Laterality. 2006; 11(1):1-14. doi: 10.1080/1357650054200000440.


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