Abstract
Between 4 and 7 months of age, infants begin to manipulate objects using role-differentiated bimanual manipulation (RDBM) where one hand stabilizes an object while the other hand manipulates the object (Rochat, 1989; Kimmerle et al., 1995, 2010). Because RDBM constrains the roles of the hands, it elicits a measurable asymmetry where the manipulating hand is considered to be the preferred hand for RDBM actions (i.e., RDBM hand preference). Initially, infants display partially differentiated roles for each hand, which is driven in part by the affordances of the object (Ramsay et al., 1979; Fagard and Jacquet, 1989; Fagard and Peze, 1997; Fagard, 1998; Fagard and Marks, 2000). Children exhibit increasing role differentiation with age (Vauclair and Imbault, 2009; Birtles et al., 2011; Cochet et al., 2011; Cochet, 2012). Only 50% of infants’ bimanual actions were characterized as fully differentiated at 12–13 months (Ramsay and Weber, 1986). At 18 months, children used a fully differentiated strategy on 71% of target RDBM actions; this figure increased to 94% by 24 months (Nelson et al., 2013). Early emerging RDBM skills (11–13 months) involve object removal and insertion, while later RDBM skills (18–24 months) include additional actions such as unscrewing and unzipping (e.g., Kimmerle et al., 2010; Nelson et al., 2013).
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Because role-differentiated bimanual manipulation (RDBM) constrains the roles of the hands, it elicits a measurable asymmetry where the manipulating hand is considered to be the preferred hand for RDBM actions (i.e., RDBM hand preference)
We urge researchers interested in the development of RDBM hand preference to adopt similar trajectory-based methods in an effort to fill the gap in our knowledge for how and when RDBM hand preference develops
Summary
Longitudinal studies have found that RDBM hand preference emerges around 11–13 months with a trend favoring the right hand (Michel et al, 1985; Kimmerle et al, 1995, 2010). A cross-sectional study on infants aged 10–17 months reported a right trend in roughly half of the sample (Vauclair and Imbault, 2009). Cochet et al (2011) reported a right trend for RDBM hand preference from 14 to 20 months. In a study that examined individual trajectories in a larger sample of 38 children, Nelson et al (2013) found 76% of children exhibited a consistent right RDBM hand preference for 7 monthly visits from 18 to 24 months, while 21% exhibited a consistent left RDBM hand preference. RDBM hand preference is hypothesized to develop between 11 and 18 months
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