Performance of subgroups of left-handers and right-handers

Fifty-three left-handers with consistent left-hand preferences (CLH), 65 left-handers with inconsistent hand preferences (ILH), and 57 right-handers (RH) were given unimanual and bimanual performance tests involving skill, speed, and strength as well as tests of articulatory speed and verbal fluency. Contrary to claims in the current literature (Ponton, 1987), CLHs and ILHs do not differ in quality and speed of performance, but, in some tests, they do show asymmetries in opposite directions. Thus, when left-handers are treated as a combined group, the faulty impression of a lack of between-hand asymmetries arises. The results suggest that a distinction between CLHs and ILHs yields subgroups with reliably different and distinctive performance patterns which are not trivially attributable to differences in strength of lateralization. CLHs behave much like mirror image RHs, whereas ILHs show a dissociation between strength, fine manual skill, attentional asymmetries.