The Handedness Index Practical Task (HI20): An economic behavioural measure for assessing manual preference

Abstract

Because self-report hand preference measures are limited to investigating cognitive aspects of manual laterality, valid, easy-to-administer and economic behavioural methods are needed for capturing the motoric component of handedness. Therefore, this study introduces the Handedness Index Practical Task (HI20) and tests it in a sample of 206 students (M age = 23.79 years, SD age = 3.01 years), half of whom were self-specified left-handers. After confirming good reliabilities at the subscale and total scale levels, k-means cluster analysis allowed an empirically based partitioning of test subjects into left- (n = 72), mixed- (n = 23) and right-handers (n = 111). To validate this categorization and the HI20 index, data were compared with the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI), EHI-short, HI22 and hand grip strength. The congruency between the HI20 clusters and alternative categorizations ranged from 95.6% to 84.0%, while the clusters explained large portions of variance in grip strength differences. The HI20 sub- and total scores showed strong correlations with other measures of lateral preference. Altogether, the freely available HI20 emerges as a reliable and valid alternative for behavioural handedness assessment, whose power lies in explaining differential hand use patterns and enabling fine-grained examinations of handedness.