Does your dominant hand become less dominant with time? The effects of aging and task complexity on hand selection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The current study examines the development of laterality throughout the lifespan, with an emphasis on aging beyond adulthood. The experimental paradigm proposes a measurement tool designed to determine the effects of task complexity, a currently misunderstood factor in hand selection. A cross-sectional sample of 60 participants (10 between 3-4 years, 10 between 10-14 years, 20 between 18-25 years, and 20 over 65 years) were asked to complete the Waterloo Handedness Questionnaire, Tapley-Bryden Dot Marking Task, and a newly created Task Complexity Gradient. This novel task required participants to reach into both ipsilateral and contralateral peripersonal space in order to complete a series of increasingly complex tasks. Although the development of lateralization is well documented throughout childhood and into adulthood, beyond adulthood the relevant literature is contradictory. Prior work has suggested an increase in motor dominance with age, while more recent studies have proposed an approach to ambidexterity. Contrary to both these suggestions, statistical analysis revealed neither an increase nor decrease in laterality with age, but that motor dominance remains consistent throughout later adulthood. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of motor dominance throughout the lifespan and the task factors that determine hand selection.Acknowledgments: The research described here was funded by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to Pamela J. Bryden, and a grant from the Faculty of Science Students Association (FOSSA) to Spencer E. Gooderham. Further recognition must be extended to Schlegel Villages and the Research Institute for Aging for their continued support.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".