Functional asymmetry in a simple coincidence-anticipation task: Effects of handedness

Abstract

Right- and left-handed performance presents different degrees of manual functional asymmetry, because left-handers usually present lower asymmetry in several tasks. Thus, we asked 27 right-handed and 33 left-handed male and female adolescents to perform a coincidence-anticipation task. Absolute, constant, and variable errors were calculated for each participant, for the preferred and non-preferred hand, as well as the performance asymmetry index. Results demonstrated that: (i) right- and left-handers performed to a similar level; (ii) both right- and left-handers were less variable when using their left hand; (iii) males were more accurate and less variable than their female counterparts. Although handedness failed to show a significant effect, our results demonstrate that both performing hand and gender have an influence on coincidence timing ability. The gender-related effect lends support to the idea that differences exist in the neural mechanisms of visuospatial processing between the sexes, and the performing hand-related effect is supposed to reflect the right hemisphere advantage in movement planning.