title: Laterality of hand, foot, eye, and ear in twins.
abstract: Information on handedness, footedness, eyedness, and earedness was collected from 33 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs and 67 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. The incidence of nonright-sidedness in the twins is not higher than that reported in the literature for singletons. Similar results are found for the other lateralities. The results of assessing handedness with preference tests do not differ from those carried out with performance tests. There are no differences in incidence of nonright-sidedness between MZ and DZ twins. The concordance of lateralities is similar in MZ and DZ twins. The proportions of Right-Right, Right-Nonright, and Nonright-Nonright pairs in both groups of twins show a binomial distribution. The present results do not confirm a genetic hypothesis of determination of sidedness in humans and are comparable with the results obtained by other twin studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ear, Nose and Throat, University of Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reiss
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tymnik
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kögler
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kögler
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Reiss