Hand Preference and Hand Ability

This volume adds new dimension and organization to the literature of touch and the hand, covering a diversity of topics surrounding the perception and cognition of touch in relation to the hand. No animal species compare to humans with regard to the haptic (or touch) sense, so unlike visual or auditory cognition, we know little about such haptic cognition. We do know that motor skills play a major role in haptics, but senses like vision do not determine hand preference or hand ability. It seems also that the potential ability to perform a task may be present in both hands and evidence indicates that the hand used to perform tactile tasks in blind or in sighted conditions is independent of one’s hand preference. This book will be useful for those in education and robotics and can serve as a general text focusing on touch and developmental psychology.

Lawrence E Marks, John B Pierce Laboratory, Yale University, USA:
In its five chapters, Hand Preference and Hand Ability provides an extensive review of functional properties of the human hand in tactile perception and tactile cognition, dealing with such topics as the relation of tactile perception to motor activity, the development of hand ability, tactile perception in sighted and blind individuals, and – an important theme of the book – the functions of lateralization (handedness).