Laterality in sport
(granted by the German Research Foundation DFG)
| Period of sponsorship: | September 1, 2007 - November 30, 2009 |
| Project management: | Dr. Norbert Hagemann, Prof. Dr. Bernd Strauß |
| Research associate: | Florian Loffing |
The percentage of left-handers in
western countries is about 10-13% (cf. Raymond, Pontier, Dufourd, & Møller, 1996). Depending on the
cultural or religious orientation of different races the left-handers frequency
considerably varies between 3.3% and 26.9% (cf. Faurie, Schiefenhövel, Le
Bomin, Billiard, & Raymond, 2005; Raymond & Pontier, 2005). An analogue
pattern can also be found in modern sport.
Left-handers are overrepresented in
interactive sports. Those sports are characterised by at least two interacting
athletes directly influencing each other during a sporting competition (e.g.
tennis, badminton, volleyball, and cricket). For example, Martina Navratilova, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and nowadays Rafael Nadal and Timo Boll are outstanding left-handed sporting athletes. In contrast, in non-interactive
sports like swimming, golf, darts, or billiard, the frequency of left-handers
does not deviate compared to the general population (for a review, cf. Grouios,
Koidou, Tsorbatzoudis, & Alexandris, 2002). Basically, two different
explanatory approaches are discussed in laterality research.
According to the innate superiority hypothesis,
left-handers generally have better neurophysiological predispositions such as
the specialisation of the right hemisphere and therefore are superior to their right-handed
opponents (cf. Geschwind & Galaburda, 1985; Holtzen, 2000). The second
approach, called the strategic advantage
hypothesis, additionally considers sport-specific circumstances. Due to the
common under-representation of left-handed athletes in sport, players are less
confronted with left-handers during training and competition, leading to minor
experience in the game against lefties. The majority of interactive sports like
tennis, badminton, or cricket, is characterised by high speeds (e.g. ball
flight), requiring well developed perceptual-motor skills (e.g. anticipation,
perception-action coupling). Thus, a lack of perceptual expertise with
left-handers might be responsible for their higher-than-average incidence in
interactive sports (negative frequency-dependent
strategic advantage).
Fig. 1. Technique of horizontally mirroring video sequences.
Video based perceptual tests in
volleyball (Neumaier, 1984), soccer (McMorris & Colenso, 1996), and tennis
(Hagemann & Ziegler, 2005) provided evidence that the action outcomes of
right-handers are significantly better anticipated than those of left-handers.
This difference even persists when presenting the same action of the same
player both as a right-handed and as a left-handed action (see Fig. 1).
Referring to Pete Sampras (1998),
who is a right-hander and a former number one in ATP world ranking, the
phenomenon of left-handers in sport can be summed up as follows: “Some people
just hate playing lefties. There’s a certain mystique surrounding left-handed
athletes, and the lefties wisely play it up.”
This mystery and the explanatory
approaches mentioned ahead will be investigated more detailed within this
project. Moreover, the hit and throw movements of left- and right-handers are
analysed to check for potential differences in certain aspects (kinematical analysis
of joint positions, speedup of hitting arm).
The techniques applied in this
context are i.a. kinematical analysis of left- and right-handed hit movements
in tennis, analysis of ball flight trajectories in tennis and cricket as well
as video based perceptual tests and trainings to investigate the side-specific
visual perception of movements in sport. Overall, the project includes eight
experiments which are mainly conducted in tennis, but also in baseball,
cricket, and table tennis.
The results of this study are of
high relevance for future scientific discussions on laterality in sport and the
phenomenon of the presumed left-handers’ advantage in interactive sports as well.
Furthermore, consequences for sport related research on expertise could be
drawn from the findings as former studies on expertise in sport mainly
concentrated on right-handed athletes.
Finally, the project also promises
scientifically funded links to sport practice, i.e. the design of training and
the preparation of tournaments, respectively.
Addresses
German Research Foundation (DFG) Hawk-Eye Innovations
Papers arisen from this research project:
Loffing, F., Hagemann, N., & Strauß, B.
(accepted). Automated processes in tennis: Do left-handed players
benefit from tactical preferences in their opponents? Journal of Sports Sciences.
Loffing, F., Hagemann, N., & Strauß, B. (2009). The serve in professional men's tennis: Effects of players' handedness. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 9, 255-274.
Literature
Faurie,
C., Schiefenhövel, W., Le Bomin, S., Billiard, S., & Raymond, M. (2005).
Variation in the frequency of left-handedness in traditional societies. Current
Anthropology, 46 (1), 142-147.
Geschwind,
N. & Galaburda, A. M. (1985). Cerebral lateralization. Biological
mechanisms, associations, and pathology: I. A hypothesis and a program for
research. Archives of Neurology, 42 (5), 428-459.
Grouios,
G., Koidou,
Hagemann,
N. & Ziegler, A. (2005). Der Vorteil von Linkshändern im Sport. In H.
Seelig, W. Göhner & R. Fuchs (Eds.), Selbststeuerung im Sport (p.
106). Hamburg: Czwalina.
Holtzen,
D. W. (2000). Handedness and professional tennis. International Journal of
Neuroscience, 105, 101-119.
McMorris,
T. & Colenso, S. (1996). Anticipation of professional soccer goalkeepers
when facing right- and left-footed penalty kicks. Perceptual and motor
skills, 82, 931-934.
Neumaier,
A. (1984). Zum Einfluß von Beobachtungsanweisungen auf die Antizipation von
Volleyballangriffen. In
Raymond,
M. & Pontier, D. (2004). Is there geographical variation in human
handedness? Laterality, 9 (1), 35-51.
Raymond,
M., Pontier, D., Dufour, A. B., & Møller, A. P. (1996).
Frequency-dependent maintenance of left handedness in humans. Proceedings of
the Royal Society of London B, 263 (1377), 1627-1633.
Sampras, P. (1998). Don't let southpaws scare you: after losing some tough matches to left-handers, we learned how to handle them. Tennis, 34 (5), 142-145.
