Cognitive abilities in left-handers: writing posture revisited

Among 1848 young men appearing before the Danish draft board, 232 (13%) wer e left-handed. Of these, 118 (51%) used an inverted, or hook-like, writing posture. 49 (21%) used a non-inverted posture and the remaining 65 (28%) co uld not be categorized. There were no differences between left- and right-h anders on a battery of four cognitive tests. However, inverted left-handers performed significantly or near-significantly better than the non-inverted left-handers on two of the four tests and significantly better on the tota l score for the test battery. These results support the contention that the inverted posture is adaptive for left-handers and suggest that it may be m ore likely to be adopted by those with better cognitive abilities. Our find ings conflict with earlier reports from two decades ago. however, and the a ssociation may therefore be socially and culturally dependent. (C) 2001 Els evier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.