Do left-handers outperform right-handers in paper-and-pencil tests of attention?
- PDF / 908,489 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 79 Downloads / 124 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Do left‑handers outperform right‑handers in paper‑and‑pencil tests of attention? Peter Wühr1 · Ulrich Ansorge2 Received: 7 December 2018 / Accepted: 3 July 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract The present study investigated the impact of the dominant hand on performance in two paper-and-pencil tests of visual selective attention (d2-R; FAIR-2). We hypothesized that preview benefits (i.e., preprocessing of stimuli located to the right of the currently fixated item) could improve test performance of left-handers as compared to right-handers because using the right hand could prevent preview benefits simply by covering subsequent stimuli. A group of left-handed students (n = 86) and a group of right-handed students (n = 90) completed both the test d2-R and the test FAIR-2 with their dominant (writing) hand. Results showed that left-handed participants outperformed right-handers in both tests. Hence, when the results of left-handers are to be compared to right-handers or to normative data (which are dominated by right-handers), the impact of preview benefits on left-hander performance should be taken into account.
Introduction The present study is concerned with the impact of the dominant hand on performance in paper-and-pencil tests of visual attention. In several widely-used tests of attention, such as the d2 test of attention (Brickenkamp, 2002; Brickenkamp & Zillmer, 1998), participants are presented with rows of visual stimuli consisting of target items among non-target (distractor) items (cf. Fig. 1a). The participants’ task consists of scanning the stimulus rows from left to right and marking the target stimuli with a pen as quickly as possible. Importantly, the instructions for performing the task and for analyzing the results ignore participants’ handedness. As a result, both left- and right-handers typically work with their dominant hand from left to right. Moreover, the individual results of left- and right-handed participants will be compared to norm data that were derived from a sample of mostly right-handed participants. However, performing paper-and-pencil tests of attention with the left hand may facilitate performance because, when participants follow the stimulus line with the pen and/or mark a target, left-handed
* Peter Wühr peter.wuehr@tu‑dortmund.de 1
Department of Psychology, TU Dortmund University, Emil‑Figge‑Strasse 50, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
2
participants can preview stimuli that follow the attended stimulus, whereas right-handed participants will cover those stimuli with their right hand. As a result, “preview benefits”, as demonstrated in studies on reading and visual search (e.g., Rayner, 1975), may provide an advantage for left-handed over right-handed test-takers.
The attention tests d2‑R and FAIR‑2 The test d2-R (Brickenkamp, Schmidt-Atzert, & Liepmann, 2010) is a paper-and-pencil test for assessing attention and concentration in children and adults. The d2-R the revised versio
Data Loading...
