Psychosocial differences between left-handed and right-handed children

Abstract

Historically left-handed people have had to cope with disparaging nicknames, sayings and misunderstanding about being left-handed. The age of hand dominance has been debated for decades with the consensus maintaining that at about 5 years old children begin to have stability in hand preference. In conjunction with hand dominance, the degree of dominance plays a significant role in the level of functioning. The impact of psychological well being during childhood is far reaching and could be life-long. Therefore, this study raised three hypotheses that could impact the future contact with students in regard to their hand preferences. Left-handed children would have significantly lower self-concept scores than right-handed children. Left-handed children would have higher anxiety levels. Left-handed children would use more external locus of control. Participants included 132 students from grades 4 through 6 from two Catholic Schools in the Wichita Diocese and one public elementary school in Reno County, Kansas. Of the 132 students 121 identified themselves as right-handed and 11 identified themselves as right-handed. To measure self-concept the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale was used. The Penn State Worry Questionnaire was used to measure anxiety. To measure locus of control the I-E Scale was used. Statistical results showed no statistically significant difference between left-handed and right-handed students in terms of anxiety and locus of control. Statistics revealed a statistically significant that lefthanded students have a statistically significant higher self-concept.