title: Hand skill and hand-eye preference in relation to verbal ability in healthy adult male and female right-handers.
abstract: Verbal as well as non-verbal performances were investigated in relation to both hand skill assessed by finger-tapping performances and hand-eye preference in 83 healthy adult right-handers, most of them students. The primary objective of this study was to show better finger-tapping performances in right-handed participants with best verbal IQ values. We found that it was not the non-verbal but the verbal abilities that were related to finger-tapping performances. This was proven, especially as to the left-hand taps. Faster left-hand taps in participants with higher verbal IQ values may be due to a closer cooperation of right-hemispheric regions in information processing and an intimate relationship between language and finger-motor functions. Secondary objectives assessed by explorative data analyses included gender differences and hand-eye preference. While in the females left-hand taps correlated somewhat more with verbal IQ values, in the males this effect was seen in selected variables of the right-hand taps. Moreover, laterality assessed in finger-tapping performances may not be in accordance with laterality found in the handedness questionnaire. In addition to this, congruent hand-eye dominance was found to be slightly more prevalent in participants with best verbal IQ values. However, these findings will have to be confirmed in further experiments.
authors.affiliation: Klinik für Psychiartrie und Psychotherapie/Campus Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. inge.gorynia@charite.de
authors.forename: Inge
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Gorynia
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Müller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001604:Berlin; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014825:Vocabulary