Measurement

Abstract

At an informal level, the assessment of lateral preference (at least of handedness) has a long history. A written account of a procedure for measuring handedness appears in the Bible (Judges 20: 15–16), where note was taken of the number of men of the tribe of Benjamin who used their left hand when throwing stones with a sling. In this first record of a measurement operation, it is clearly a combination of preference (and skill) at a unimanual task that determines the dominant or preferred hand. The first formal measurement of hand preference by a behavioral scientist may have been the work of Sir Francis Galton. He tested approximately 7,000 males who attended a health exhibition in 1884. The measure of handedness was a test of strength, in which each individual pressed a dynamometer with each hand in turn.