Abstract
Handedness is often thought of as a hand “preference” for specific tasks or components of bimanual tasks. Nevertheless, hand selection decisions depend on many factors beyond hand dominance. While these decisions are likely influenced by which hand might show performance advantages for the particular task and conditions, there also appears to be a bias toward the dominant hand, regardless of performance advantage. This study examined the impact of hand selection decisions and workspace location on reaction time and movement quality. Twenty-six neurologically intact participants performed targeted reaching across the horizontal workspace in a 2D virtual reality environment, and we compared reaction time across two groups: those selecting which hand to use on a trial-by-trial basis (termed the choice group) and those performing the task with a preassigned hand (the no-choice group). Along with reaction time, we also compared reach performance for each group across two ipsilateral workspaces: medial and lateral. We observed a significant difference in reaction time between the hands in the choice group, regardless of workspace. In contrast, both hands showed shorter but similar reaction times and differences between the lateral and medial workspaces in the no-choice group. We conclude that the shorter reaction times of the dominant hand under choice conditions may be due to dominant hand bias in the selection process that is not dependent upon interlimb performance differences.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
The project described was supported by National Institutes of Health Award Number R01HD059783 to RLS, along with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant TL1 TR002016, and Grant UL1 TR002014. This research was also supported by an endowment from Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Institutes for Life Sciences at Penn State University to RLS. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
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Dexheimer, B., Przybyla, A., Murphy, T.E. et al. Reaction time asymmetries provide insight into mechanisms underlying dominant and non-dominant hand selection. Exp Brain Res 240, 2791–2802 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-022-06451-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-022-06451-2