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Lateral preferences are strange, puzzling, and on the surface, not particularly adaptive aspects of behavior. Why one chooses habitually to write or to brush the teeth with the right hand, while a friend or family member habitually uses the left hand, might be interesting enough to elicit some conversation over dinner or a drink, but certainly does not seem to warrant serious scientific study. Yet when one looks at human behaviors more carefully, one becomes aware that asymmet rical behaviors favoring one side or the other are actually a fairly universal characteristic of human beings. In the same way that we are right or left handed, we are also right or left footed, eyed, and eared. As a species, we are quite lopsided in our behavioral coordinations; furthermore, the vast majority of us are right sided. Considering that we are looking at a sizable number of behaviors, and at a set of biases that seem to be systematic and show a predictable skew in the popUlation, the problem takes on greater significance. The most obvious form of lateral preference is, of course, handedness. When studying behavioral asymmetries, this is the issue with which most investigators start. Actually, we entered this research area through a much different route. Around 1971 we became interested in the problem of eye dominance or eye preference. This is a behavior where the input to one eye seems to be preferred over that to the other in certain binocular viewing situations.
List of contents
1. Human Sidedness.- 2. Measurement.- Proficiency and Preference.- Hand Preference.- Foot Preference.- Eye Preference.- Ear Preference.- Quantification of Lateral Preference Behaviors.- 3. Population Characteristics.- Distributional Characteristics within Indexes of Lateral Preference.- Distributional Characteristics across Indexes of Lateral Preference.- 4. Physiological, Biological, and Cerebral Asymmetries.- Physiological Asymmetries.- Cerebral Asymmetries.- Biological Asymmetries.- One-Sidedness.- 5. Genetic Approaches.- Genetic Explanations for Hand Preference.- Genetic Explanations for Sidedness Formation.- 6. Social and Cultural Environment.- The Right-Sided World Hypothesis.- Cultural Influences.- 7. Birth Stress.- 8. Special Populations.- Neurological Injury.- Psychopathy, Emotional Instability, and Criminality.- Cognitive Deficits.- 9. Reading.- 10 Cognitive Abilities.- 11. Sensorimotor Coordination.- Hand-Eye Coordination.- Sports Performance.- 12. Sensory Preferences.- Eye Preference.- Ear Preference.- 13. Reformulation.- References.- Author Index.
About the author
Stanley Coren ist emeritierter Professor für Psychologie der Universität von British Columbia, Kanada. Mit seiner Frau und seinen drei Hunden lebt er in Vancouver.
