Fernandez-Velasco, P;
Coutrot, A;
Oloye, H;
Wiener, JM;
Dalton, RC;
Holscher, C;
Manley, E;
... Spiers, HJ; + view all
(2023)
No link between handedness and spatial navigation: evidence from over 400 000
participants in 41 countries.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
, 290
(2008)
, Article 20231514. 10.1098/rspb.2023.1514.
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Abstract
There is an active debate concerning the association of handedness and spatial ability. Past studies used small sample sizes. Determining the effect of handedness on spatial ability requires a large, cross-cultural sample of participants and a navigation task with real-world validity. Here, we overcome these challenges via the mobile app Sea Hero Quest. We analysed the navigation performance from 422 772 participants from 41 countries and found no reliable evidence for any difference in spatial ability between leftand right-handers across all countries. A small but growing gap in performance appears for participants over 64 years old, with left-handers outperforming right-handers. Further analysis, however, suggests that this gap is most likely due to selection bias. Overall, our study clarifies the factors associated with spatial ability and shows that left-handedness is not associated with either a benefit or a deficit in spatial ability.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | No link between handedness and spatial navigation: evidence from over 400 000 participants in 41 countries |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2023.1514 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.1514 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Spatial cognition; education; cross-cultural; navigation; handednesses |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10180742 |
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