Left preference for sport tasks does not necessarily indicate left-handedness: sport-specific lateral preferences, relationship with handedness and implications for laterality research in behavioural sciences.

ABSTRACT: In the elite domain of interactive sports, athletes who demonstrate a left preference (e.g., holding a weapon with the left hand in fencing or boxing in a 'southpaw' stance) seem overrepresented. Such excess indicates a performance advantage and was also interpreted as evidence in favour of frequency-dependent selection mechanisms to explain the maintenance of left-handedness in humans. To test for an overrepresentation, the incidence of athletes' lateral preferences is typically compared with an expected ratio of left- to right-handedness in the normal population. However, the normal population reference values did not always relate to the sport-specific tasks of interest, which may limit the validity of reports of an excess of 'left-oriented' athletes. Here we sought to determine lateral

SUBMITTER: Loffing F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4139391 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature