Effect of handedness on visual, auditory and cutaneous reaction times in normal subjects

Abstract

Background & Objective: Simple reaction time is the time interval between stimulus and response. In this study the impact of handedness on auditory, visual and cutaneous simple reaction time have been investigated. Methods: 100 healthy male volunteers of age group 18-25yrs were participated as subjects. According to criteria of Cromwell and Rife the subjects were divided into 94 right handed and 6 left handed persons. The subjects were presented with auditory, visual and cutaneous stimuli by using an electronic response analyzer. Result: The paired ‘t’ test for comparison of all the parameters of simple reaction time recordings between right and left hand values in right handed subjects show P0.05for all the parameters of simple reaction time. Conclusion: In right handed individual all reaction time parameters of right hand are significantly faster when compared to left hand values. Whereas there is no significant difference between right and left hand values in left handed subjects.

Keywords

• Auditory reaction time
• Cutaneous reaction time
• Visual reaction time
• Handedness