Handedness and mental rotation

Right-handed and left-handed individuals have been found to differ in their ability to perform tasks with the dominant and non-dominant hand. Laterality of brain function in verbal tasks and spatial cognitive tasks also appears to differ according to handedness. Spatial cognitive tasks involving mental rotation of shapes have been used to study the relationships of handedness, handedness of immediate family and sex to reaction time and correct response rate. Cerebral activation during these tasks has also been studied. The relationship between handedness and reaction time has also been investigated in tasks involving mental rotation of hand images, where the subject is presented with a photograph or drawing of a hand rotated at a specific angle and must judge whether it is a left or right hand. We have previously published studies on brain activation during the mental rotation of shapes and on reaction times in the mental rotation of hand pictures in left- and right-handed subjects. In this paper we review the literature relating to the relationship of handedness to reaction times and brain activation in mental rotation tasks.