Quantitative assessment of right and left reaching movements in infants: A longitudinal study from 6 to 36 months

Abstract This longitudinal study aimed to explore the early presence and developmental pattern of laterality in reaching kinematics and its relationship to side use. In order to do so, 3‐D kinematic measurements as well as 2‐D video recordings of right‐left reaching movements were successively carried out for 17 infants at the ages of 6, 9, 12, and 36 months. Additional investigations of hand preference were made at 36 months. As four infants were prematurely born, their outcomes were compared to those of the fullterm participants. While most of the infants in the early ages showed a rather inconsistent preference in terms of frequency and distributions of right‐left side use, the analyses of reaching kinematics revealed a more consistent pattern of fewer movements units (MUs) and straighter right‐sided reaching for the majority of infants at all tested ages. However, reaching kinematics from the preterm infants were generally more variable and less side consistent. It is proposed that the development of human handedness originates from an early right arm rather than hand preference in that representations of asymmetry in bilateral projections (involved in arm movements) developmentally precede contralateral projections (involved in refined hand/finger movements). © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 48: 444–459, 2006.