Hand Preference and Hand Ability

Hand Preference and Hand Ability
Author: Miriam Ittyerah
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-09-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 902727164X

This volume adds new dimension and organization to the literature of touch and the hand, covering a diversity of topics surrounding the perception and cognition of touch in relation to the hand. No animal species compare to humans with regard to the haptic (or touch) sense, so unlike visual or auditory cognition, we know little about such haptic cognition. We do know that motor skills play a major role in haptics, but senses like vision do not determine hand preference or hand ability. It seems also that the potential ability to perform a task may be present in both hands and evidence indicates that the hand used to perform tactile tasks in blind or in sighted conditions is independent of one’s hand preference. This book will be useful for those in education and robotics and can serve as a general text focusing on touch and developmental psychology.

On the Other Hand

On the Other Hand
Author: Howard I. Kushner
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1421423340

Does being left-handed make a person different in any way that matters? Since the late Stone Age, approximately 10 percent of humans have been left-handed, yet for most of human history left-handedness has been stigmatized. In On the Other Hand, Howard I. Kushner traces the impact of left-handedness on human cognition, behavior, culture, and health. A left-hander himself, Kushner has long been interested in the meanings associated with left-handedness, and ultimately with whether hand preference can even be defined in a significant way. As he explores the medical and cultural history of left-handedness, Kushner describes the associated taboos, rituals, and stigma from around the globe. The words “left” and “left hand” have negative connotations in all languages, and left-handers have even historically been viewed as disabled. In this comprehensive history of left-handedness, Kushner asks why left-handedness exists. He examines the relationship—if any—between handedness, linguistics, and learning disabilities, reveals how toleration of left-handedness serves as a barometer of wider cultural toleration and permissiveness, and wonders why the reported number of left-handers is significantly lower in Asia and Africa than in the West. Written in a lively style that mixes personal biography with scholarly research, On the Other Hand tells a comprehensive story about the science, traditions, and prejudices surrounding left-handedness.

Hand Preference

Hand Preference
Author: Rhoda P. Erhardt
Publisher: Erhardt Developmental Products
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1930282664

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000229 EndHTML:0000004007 StartFragment:0000002898 EndFragment:0000003971 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/rhodaperhardt/Documents/Business%20docs/Publications/HandPrefBook/HandPrefDescription.doc This book is for therapists, teachers, and parents who are trying to answer these questions: What are the most important things we need to know about hand preference, and its relevance to function? What can we do to help a child who has problems with functional skills such as handwriting, which may or may not relate to inconsistent handedness? Highlights: Theoretical Concepts, Normal Components of Hand Preference, Testing Methods, Identification of Functional Problems and Practical Interventions, CD-Rom, including the Erhardt Hand Preference Assessment (EHPA), the EHPA-S (Short Screening Form), and the Documentation of Hand Preference and Quality of Performance, to print unlimited copies for clinical or educational purposes

Motor Skills and Their Foundational Role for Perceptual, Social, and Cognitive Development

Motor Skills and Their Foundational Role for Perceptual, Social, and Cognitive Development
Author: Klaus Libertus
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2017-05-18
Genre: Motor ability in children
ISBN: 2889451593

Motor skills are a vital part of healthy development and are featured prominently both in physical examinations and in parents’ baby diaries. It has been known for a long time that motor development is critical for children’s understanding of the physical and social world. Learning occurs through dynamic interactions and exchanges with the physical and the social world, and consequently movements of eyes and head, arms and legs, and the entire body are a critical during learning. At birth, we start with relatively poorly developed motor skills but soon gain eye and head control, learn to reach, grasp, sit, and eventually to crawl and walk on our own. The opportunities arising from each of these motor milestones are profound and open new and exciting possibilities for exploration and interactions, and learning. Consequently, several theoretical accounts of child development suggest that growth in cognitive, social, and perceptual domains are influences by infants’ own motor experiences. Recently, empirical studies have started to unravel the direct impact that motor skills may have other domains of development. This volume is part of this renewed interest and includes reviews of previous findings and recent empirical evidence for associations between the motor domain and other domains from leading researchers in the field of child development. We hope that these articles will stimulate further research on this interesting question.

Manual Specialization and the Developing Brain

Manual Specialization and the Developing Brain
Author: Gerald Young
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2012-12-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0323150608

Manual Specialization and the Developing Brain deals with how the hands acquire different skills and what this may tell about the child's developing brain. This book is organized into three parts. Part I provides a general overview of lateralization development, while Part II compiles contributions that are more theoretical in nature. The last part summarizes the empirical research with neonates. This text specifically discusses the studies of early lateralized manual behaviors, character of human handedness, and factors that contribute toward variability in lateralization. The hemisphere differences in response to specific stimulus cues, phylogenetic perspective, and infant motor skills project are also elaborated. This text likewise covers the developmental view of hemispheric specialization and changes and constancies in development. This publication is useful to pediatricians, medical practitioners, and researchers concerned with early lateralized behavior.

Manual Skills, Handedness, and the Organization of Language in the Brain

Manual Skills, Handedness, and the Organization of Language in the Brain
Author: Gregory Króliczak
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre:
ISBN: 2889459683

Whereas the cerebral specialization for skilled manual actions (praxis) seems closely linked to dominance for language, with both functions left lateralized in the vast majority of humans, the neural correlates of hand preference are still less well understood. Indeed, as a combination of inherited and non-inherited genomic factors (i.e., direct parental and concealed environmental contributions), handedness – in contrast to language – is less likely to have strong genetic indices and clearly lateralized functional organization. What about eye dominance, unimanual and bimanual object manipulation, and gestures, or attentional systems and the related egocentric or allocentric coding of space? Are these different categories functionally and structurally interconnected? Is their development and contribution to task performance linked, even if they are differently lateralized? How are they connected to language learning or its development? In trying to understand these relationships and their neural underpinnings we obtain a new insight into fundamental human behaviors, which depend either on shared or distinct cerebral resources that must, nevertheless, be harmonized by higher-order cerebral processing. In this Research Topic we assembled a dozen of original research contributions, as well as articles with more theoretically-driven perspectives, that directly speak to these issues. Hopefully this work will serve as a foundation for further discussions and will stimulate new research in this fascinating domain.

Lateralization and cognitive systems

Lateralization and cognitive systems
Author: Sebastian Ocklenburg
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 2889194116

Left-right asymmetries of structure and function are a common organization principle in the brains of humans and non-human vertebrates alike. While there are inherently asymmetric systems such as the human language system or the song system of songbirds, the impact of structural or functional asymmetries on perception, cognition and behavior is not necessarily limited to these systems. For example, performance in experimental paradigms that assess executive functions such as inhibition, planning or action monitoring is influenced by information processing in the bottom-up channel. Depending on the type of stimuli used, one hemisphere can be more efficient in processing than the other and these functional cerebral asymmetries have been shown to modulate the efficacy of executive functions via the bottom-up channel. We only begin to understand the complex neuronal mechanisms underlying this interaction between hemispheric asymmetries and cognitive systems. Therefore, it is the aim of this Research Topics to further elucidate how structural or functional hemispheric asymmetries modulate perception, cognition and behavior in the broadest sense.

The Evolution of Hemispheric Specialization in Primates

The Evolution of Hemispheric Specialization in Primates
Author: William D. Hopkins
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2007-09-18
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0080557805

Hemispheric specialization, and lateralized sensory, cognitive or motor function of the left and right halves of the brain, commonly manifests in humans as right-handedness and left hemisphere specialization of language functions. Historically, this has been considered a hallmark of, and unique to, human evolution. Some theories propose that human right-handedness evolved in the context of language and speech while others that it was a product of the increasing motor demands associated with feeding or tool-use. In the past 20-25 years, there has been a plethora of research in animals on the topic of whether population-level asymmetries in behavioral processes or neuro-anatomical structures exist in animals, notably primates and people have begun to question the historical assumptions that hemispheric specialization is unique to humans. This book brings together various summary chapters on the expression of behavioral and neuro-anatomical asymmetries in primates. Several chapters summarize entire families of primates while others focus on genetic and non-genetic models of handedness in humans and how they can be tested in non-human primates. In addition, it makes explicit links between various theoretical models of the development of handedness in humans with the observed patterns of results in non-human primates. A second emphasis is on comparative studies of handedness in primates. There is now enough data in the literature across different species to present an evolutionary tree for the emergence of handedness (and perhaps other aspects of hemispheric specialization, such as neuro-anatomical asymmetries) and its relation to specific morphological and ecological adaptations in various primate species.* The first treatment of this important topic since 1998* Examines the tenet that lateralization and handedness is a uniquely human character through evidence from higer and lower primates and with reference to other vertebrates.* Advances our understanding of the occurrence, evolution and significance of lateralization and handedness effects.

Individual Differences in Hemispheric Specialization

Individual Differences in Hemispheric Specialization
Author: A. Glass
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1468478990

This volume originates from a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Maratea. Italy from 8th-15th October 198~. Aims and contributions are described at greater length in the Introduction and the following chapters. It is hoped that this volume will provide a critical overview of hemispheric specialization in relation to individual differences, but one that is not intended to be comprehensive. Three contributions on this theme are made by authors who were invited to the Workshop but were unable to participate in it. The volume contains a critical appraisal of the differentially specialized functions of left and right human cerebral hemispheres in verbal and visuospatial domains respectively (formerly cerebral dominance). in relation to individual variation due. for example. to gender and handedness. Critical cross-comparison of several methods of assessing hemispheric specialization such as perceptual/behavioral. clinical/neurological. electrophysiological and "real time" methods of assessment of cerebral orientation have been made. Individual differences have been considered in relation to statistical concepts in the assessment of cerebral lateralization. Some emphasis has been placed on the application of these methods and concepts to psychopathology.

Neuropsychological Assessment

Neuropsychological Assessment
Author: Muriel Deutsch Lezak
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1048
Release: 1995-03-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0195090314

The 12 chapters in the second section contain nearly all of the tests and assessment techniques covered in the previous editions plus many additional ones, including newly developed neuropsychological tests, tests from other branches of psychology, research techniques that have only recently been introduced into clinical neuropsychology, tests originating in Europe and elsewhere, and a few measures - as yet untried by neuropsychology - that appear to be potentially useful for neuropsychological purposes. Thus, the third edition of Neuropsychological Assessment maintains its multipurpose functions as an authoritative textbook, reference work, and practitioner's manual.