Is strength of handedness reliable over repeated testing? An examination of typical development and autism spectrum disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite a lack of agreement concerning the age at which adult-like patterns of handedness emerge, it is generally understood that hand preference presents early in life and development is variable. Young children (ages 3-5 years) are described as having weak hand preference; however, older children (ages 7-10 years) display stronger patterns. Here, strength of hand preference refers to reliable use of the preferred hand. In comparison to their typically developing (TD) peers, individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are described as having a weak hand preference. This study aimed to extend the literature to assess three measures of handedness (Waterloo Handedness Questionnaire - WHQ, Annett pegboard - AP, and WatHand Cabinet Test - WHCT) in two repeated sessions. The first research question aimed to delineate if the strength of hand use changes across testing sessions as a function of age in typical development. Right-handed children reported a reliable preference for the right hand on the WHQ, similar to adults. A marginally significant difference was revealed between 3- to 4- and 5- to 6-year-olds on the AP. This was attributed to weak lateralization in 3- to 4-year-olds, where the establishment of hand preference by age 6 leads to superior performance with the preferred hand in 5- to 6-year-olds. Finally, for the WHCT, 3- to 4-year-olds had the highest bimanual score, indicating use of the same hand to lift the cabinet door and retrieve an object. It is likely that the task was not motorically complex enough to drive preferred hand selection for older participants. The second research question sought to determine if there is difference between (TD) children and children with ASD. No differences were revealed; however, children with ASD did display variable AP performance, providing partial support for previous literature. Findings will be discussed in light of relevant literature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".