ABSTRACT
Observations of lateral preferences were introduced for the second sample and continued for other samples. The actions were to wave goodbye, throw a ball, kick a soccer ball, insert beans in a bottle, screw on the lid of a jar, sight through a tube, eat with a spoon, and use a pencil. As the findings for hand preference were not described separately from those for foot and eye preference, and as the hand tests included a gesture (waving) that requires no skill, the findings for preference cannot be compared directly with my samples. The findings of particular interest here are those for hand skill. The first group of questions concerns age, sex, and racial group. The second group of questions concerns the balanced polymorphism hypothesis. Among Mayan children slow to learn Spanish, was L-R skill smaller than in those who learned Spanish easily, as expected if the latter but not the former enjoyed the benefits of the RS + gene? Third, among children left-handed for preference, were absolute hand speeds faster than among right-handed children? This surprising finding for my samples was discovered long after the data were gathered. Would Demarest also find an absolute hand speed advantage for left-handers, also several years after making the measurements?
