Edinburgh Handedness Inventory

Edinburgh Handedness Inventory

The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory is a measurement scale used to assess the dominance of a person's right or left hand in everyday activities, often referred to as laterality. The inventory was developed by R.C. Oldfield, a British psychologist, and was first published in 1971.

Overview

The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory is a self-report questionnaire that asks individuals to indicate their hand preference in performing ten everyday tasks, such as writing, drawing, throwing, and using scissors. The responses are then used to calculate a laterality quotient (LQ), which indicates the degree of handedness. A positive LQ indicates right-handedness, a negative LQ indicates left-handedness, and an LQ near zero indicates mixed-handedness.

File:Edinburgh Handedness Inventory.png

Sample of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory questionnaire

Use in Research

The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory is widely used in research studies investigating the relationship between handedness and various psychological and physiological phenomena, such as brain lateralization, language processing, and neurological disorders. It is also used in clinical settings to assess hand dominance in patients undergoing surgery or rehabilitation.

Criticisms and Alternatives

Despite its widespread use, the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory has been criticized for its binary approach to handedness, which may not accurately reflect the complexity of hand preference in real-world tasks. Alternative measures of handedness, such as the Waterloo Handedness Questionnaire and the Annett Hand Preference Questionnaire, have been developed to address these limitations.

See Also

• Handedness
• Laterality
• Brain lateralization
• Waterloo Handedness Questionnaire
• Annett Hand Preference Questionnaire

References

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