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Is there handedness for tactile acuity? A systematic review and meta-analysis
Matthew R Longo1, Raffaele Tucciarelli1
1School of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK.
None:
Most people have a strong preference to use one hand over the other for complex motor tasks, and are more skilled at doing so, a phenomenon known as handedness. Is there also handedness for the sense of touch? This paper reports a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that have compared tactile spatial acuity between the two hands in healthy humans. A total of 107 samples from 85 papers (total N = 4949) were identified from searches of the PubMed and Scopus databases in September 2024. Potential moderators of such differences were also explored, including psychophysical task, age, and geographic location. Overall, there was no evidence for systematic differences in tactile acuity between the two hands (Hedges's g = -0.021, 95% CI [-0.070, 0.028]), nor of any effect of potential moderating variables. There was, however, substantial heterogeneity in the results. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the links between motor and somatosensory function.
