Manual performance and laterality in twins of known chorion type

Manual performance, direction, and degree of laterality were tested in monozygotic (MZ) twins (8-12 years old) of known chorion type and dizygotic (DZ) twins. Three manual tasks rarely employed in twin studies were used; dot-filling, tapping, and peg-moving tasks. No chorion effect was observed: the monochorionic and dichorionic MZs differed neither for frequency of discordant pairs nor for handedness, laterality measurements, and manual performance. The pooled MZs and DZs were then compared in a classic twin design. The within-pair resemblance was not higher in MZs than in DZs for variables measuring level of manual performance. For laterality scores intraclass correlations were close to zero in MZ and DZ twin groups.