Writing with the non-dominant hand: cross-handedness trainability in adult individuals

Abstract

Adult volunteers (8 males and 13 females) aged 20-56 years, both right- and left-handed, were asked to train their non-preferred hand to write two standard sentences by practising daily over a 28-day period. At the end of this period their non-preferred-hand writing was of good quality and participants felt quite comfortable performing this task. The quality of non-preferred-hand writing achieved was unrelated to age. We postulate that handedness, in terms of actual performance, may be less pronounced than is suggested by studies of hand preference.