The results were now very interesting. During the month ending June
15th the child showed no decided preference for either hand in
reaching straight before her within the easy reaching distance of ten
inches, but a slight balance in favour of the left hand; yet she was
right-handed to a marked degree during the same period as regards
movements which required effort or strain, such as grasping for
objects twelve to fifteen inches distant. For the greater distances,
the left hand was used in only five cases as against seventy-four
cases of the use of the right hand; and further, all these five cases
were twelve-inch distances, the left hand being used absolutely not at
all in the forty-five cases at longer distances.
In order to test this further, I varied the point of exposure of the
stimulus to the right or left, aiming thus to attract the hand on one
side or the other, and so to determine whether the growth of such a
preference was limited to experiences of convenience in reaching to
adjacent local objects, etc.
The deviation to the left in front of the body only called out the
right hand to greater exertion, while the left hand fell into still
greater disuse. This seems to show that "dextrality" is not derived
from the experience of the individual in using either hand
predominantly for reaching, grasping, holding, etc., within the
easiest range of that hand. The right hand intruded regularly upon the
domain of the left.
Proceeding upon the clew thus obtained, a clew which seems to suggest
that the hand preference is influenced by the stimulus to the eye, I
introduced hand observations into a series of experiments already
mentioned above on the same child's perception of the different
colours; thinking that the colour stimulus which represented the
strongest inducement to the child to reach might have the same effect
in determining the use of the right hand as the increased distance in
the experiments already described. This inference is proved to be
correct by the results.
It should be added that in all cases in which both hands were used
together, each hand was called out with evident independence of the
other, both about the same time, and both carried energetically to the
goal. In many other cases in which either right or left hand is given
in the results, the other hand also moved, but in a subordinate and
aimless way. There was a very marked difference between the use of
both hands in some cases, and of one hand followed by, or accompanied
by, the other in other cases. It was very rare that the second hand
did not thus follow or accompany the first; and this was extremely
marked in the violent reaching for which the right hand was mainly
used. This movement was almost invariably accompanied by an objectless
and fruitless symmetrical movement of the other hand.
The results of the entire series of experiments on the use of the
hands may be stated as follows, mainly in the words in which they were
summarily reported some time ago:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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