Edlin James M, Leppanen Marcus L, Fain Robin J, Hackländer Ryan P, Hanaver-Torrez Shelley D, Lyle Keith B
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, United States.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, United States.
Brain Cogn. 2015 Mar;94:44-51. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2015.01.003. Epub 2015 Feb 2.
Researchers who study human cognition and behavior, especially from a neuroscience perspective, often measure subjects' handedness. The most common measure of handedness is the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI; Oldfield, 1971). Several potential problems with the EHI have been identified during its long history. We informally observed that individual researchers have adopted a variety of modified versions of the EHI, each addressing perceived shortcomings in its own way. To confirm this, we reviewed 899 articles reporting usage of the EHI from 1998 to 2012. For those articles reporting details of the instrument used, we coded information about test items, response format, and scheme for classifying individuals as right-handed. We found tremendous diversity in all three components of the inventory, confirming that many variants of the EHI are used in contemporary research. We furthermore report evidence that researchers who use variants may be unaware that they are not using the original instrument. Variant usage appears to be largely ad hoc and lacking any semblance of uniformity within the scientific community. We discuss how highly variable usage of the EHI may imperil efforts to produce replicable and convergent research findings, and we offer recommendations for future action.
研究人类认知与行为的科研人员，尤其是从神经科学角度进行研究的人员，常常会测量受试者的利手情况。利手最常用的测量方法是爱丁堡利手量表（EHI；奥德菲尔德，1971年）。在其漫长的使用历史中，EHI已被发现存在若干潜在问题。我们非正式地观察到，个别研究人员采用了各种EHI的修改版本，每个版本都以自己的方式解决了所察觉到的缺陷。为了证实这一点，我们查阅了1998年至2012年期间899篇报告使用EHI情况的文章。对于那些报告所使用工具详细信息的文章，我们对测试项目、回答格式以及将个体分类为右利手的方案等信息进行了编码。我们发现该量表的所有三个组成部分都存在巨大差异，这证实了当代研究中使用了许多EHI的变体。我们还进一步报告了证据，表明使用变体的研究人员可能并未意识到他们使用的并非原始工具。变体的使用似乎很大程度上是临时决定的，在科学界缺乏任何统一的表象。我们讨论了EHI的高度可变使用方式可能如何危及得出可重复和趋同研究结果的努力，并为未来行动提供了建议。
