ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2023
No link between handedness and spatial navigation: evidence from over 400 000 participants in 41 countries.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Separable cognitive and motor decline tracked across adult life-span for goal-directed navigation.iScience · 2025Article
- Predicting real-world navigation performance from a virtual navigation task in older adults.PloS one · 2025Article
- Intrahemispheric White Matter Asymmetries and Interhemispheric Connections Underlying the Lateralization of Language Production and Spatial Attention in Left-Handers.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is an active debate concerning the association of handedness and spatial ability. Past studies used small sample sizes. Determining the effect of handedness on spatial ability requires a large, cross-cultural sample of participants and a navigation task with real-world validity. Here, we overcome these challenges via the mobile app Sea Hero Quest. We analysed the navigation performance from 422 772 participants from 41 countries and found no reliable evidence for any difference in spatial ability between left- and right-handers across all countries. A small but growing gap in performance appears for participants over 64 years old, with left-handers outperforming right-handers. Further analysis, however, suggests that this gap is most likely due to selection bias. Overall, our study clarifies the factors associated with spatial ability and shows that left-handedness is not associated with either a benefit or a deficit in spatial ability.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.