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On the Other Hand: Statistical Issues in the Assessment and Interpretation of Hand Preference Data in Nonhuman Primates

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Abstract

I describe methodological and statistical issues in the assessment of hand preference in nonhuman primates and discuss them in the context of a recent paper by McGrew and Marchant (1997) in which they conclude that there is no convincing evidence of population-level hand preferences in nonhuman primates. The criteria used by them to evaluate individual and population-level hand preferences are flawed, which results in an oversimplification of findings in nonhuman primates. I further argue that the classification schema used by McGrew and Marchant (1997) to compare hand preference distributions between species is theoretically weak and does not offer a meaningful way to compare human and nonhuman primate handedness.

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Correspondence to William D. Hopkins.

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Hopkins, W.D. On the Other Hand: Statistical Issues in the Assessment and Interpretation of Hand Preference Data in Nonhuman Primates. International Journal of Primatology 20, 851–866 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020822401195

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