Adrien Meguerditchian emailed me some recent articles to allay my skepticism about evidence of handedness in nonhuman primates. One is in press, Meguerditchian et al., "Captive chimpanzees use their right hand to communicate with each other: Implications for the origin of the cerebral substrate for language," Cortex (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2009.02.013. The other one is Adrien Meguerditchian and Jacques Vauclair, "Contrast of hand preferences between communicative gestures and non-communicative actions in baboons: Implications for the origins of hemispheric specialization for language," Brain & Language (2008), doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2008.10.004. Meguerditchian's case is bolstered by the recent research. Longtime readers of this blog, nevertheless, will suspect that my skepticism is not easily shaken. In fact, however, I am leaning away from the belief that handedness is uniquely tied to human vocal speech. I remain uncertain about it. My skepticism in no way presupposes any closure on the question of evolutionary substrates for the pattern of lateralization evident in sapiens.
Labels: baboons, chimpanzees, chirality, gesture, hands, humans, language, Meguerditchian, primates