Measures of lateral dominance: interrelationships and temporal stability

The concept of cerebral dominance has attracted recent attention as a dimension in human cognition and psychopathology. Questions have been raised about the validity of the construct and the adequacy of instruments commonly used to assess it. The present study measured the test-retest reliabilities and interrelationships of four commonly used behavioral measures of lateral dominance, dowel balancing, peg placement, grip strength, and conjugate lateral eye movement, for a group of 16 male and 27 female college students whose performance on the tasks was recorded on 2 occasions scheduled a week apart. Moderate reliabilities for all measures except grip strength were obtained. Sex of subjects might be an important variable in reliability of certain tasks. Correlations among the measures were uniformly low, suggesting a lack of common variance and therefore a lack of equivalence as independent variables. Investigators are encouraged to select measures with regard to internal consistency and there appropriateness to the dependent variable(s) in question rather than mere convenience of administration.