HANDEDNESS DEPENDENCY IN RECALL FROM EVERYDAY MEMORY

A number of previous studies have demonstrated systematic misrememberi ng of the direction in which the Queen's head faces on British coins. Two experiments were carried out to investigate whether this phenomeno n is affected by a person's handedness. In both experiments, right-han ded and left-handed participants were found to differ significantly in their verbal responses, with recall performance significantly worse t han chance for right-handed but not for left-handed participants. Expe riment 2 also examined degrees of handedness, and found significant va riation in recall across the handedness range. Performance in this eve ryday-memory paradigm appears to be determined by both handedness and schema factors. It is proposed that although in this task the response was a verbal one, relevant motor imagery may nevertheless have been a ctivated and led to the highly unusual observation of an effect of han dedness upon cognitive performance.