A large-scale population study of early life factors influencing left-handedness - PubMed (original) (raw)

A large-scale population study of early life factors influencing left-handedness

Carolien G F de Kovel et al. Sci Rep. 2019.

Abstract

Hand preference is a conspicuous variation in human behaviour, with a worldwide proportion of around 90% of people preferring to use the right hand for many tasks, and 10% the left hand. We used the large cohort of the UK biobank (~500,000 participants) to study possible relations between early life factors and adult hand preference. The probability of being left-handed was affected by the year and location of birth, likely due to cultural effects. In addition, hand preference was affected by birthweight, being part of a multiple birth, season of birth, breastfeeding, and sex, with each effect remaining significant after accounting for all others. Analysis of genome-wide genotype data showed that left-handedness was very weakly heritable, but shared no genetic basis with birthweight. Although on average left-handers and right-handers differed for a number of early life factors, all together these factors had only a minimal predictive value for individual hand preference.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Associations between predictor variables. For associations between categorical variables, Cremer’s V is presented. Associations between continuous variables are shown as Pearson R. Associations between binary categorical and continuous variables are shown as Spearman rho. Associations between multi-category variable UK Country and continuous variables are shown as the ANOVA adjusted R. Colour and sign show the direction of the association between two binary variables, between two continuous variables or between binary and continuous variables (orange positive, green negative). Grey font indicates non-significant associations (p > 0.001).

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