Evidence of Sex-Linked Familial Transmission of Lateral Preferences for Hand, Foot, Eye, Ear, and Overall Sidedness in a Latent Variable Analysis.

This study investigated the familial transmission of handedness, footedness, eyedness, earedness, and of underlying sidedness in a sample of adults (n = 592 families; 1528 individuals in total), using multi-item inventories and probabilistic methods for preference classification. Our results corroborate three classes of lateral preferences and of sidedness each, right, mixed, and left. Consistent with genetic studies, we obtained evidence of parent-of-origin and sex-of-children effects, suggesting important roles of maternal mixed preferences and of paternal left preferences. Further, parental age at conception predicted mixed preferences in the child. We recommend a trichotomous classification of lateral preferences also in future studies, and to intensify research into the genetic bases of footedness, eyedness and earedness.