Comparison of Nondominant and Dominant Hand Performances on a Test of Visual Construction and Memory in a Right Hand Dominant Population

Dominant side hemiparesis, hemiplegia, and upper extremity injuries are frequently encountered in neuropsychological practice. Individuals with these limitations are often forced to use the nondominant hand for everyday manual tasks, and they may be instructed to complete paper and pencil with the nondominant hand during a neuropsychological evaluation. It is important to provide data on nondominant hand completion of commonly administered neuropsychological tests to demonstrate the extent to which this impacts performance. Using both clinical and nonclinical samples, the present study investigated the effects of nondominant hand completion of direct copy and memory components on the Visual Reproduction (VR) subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale- Fourth Edition (WMS-IV). The first part of the study revealed statistically significant intermanual differences on the VR Copy task (p < .05), but differences were minimal and the majority of the total sample obtained a score of >41/43. The second part of the study set out to determine if nondominant hand use results in poorer visual memory scores. Memory scores were similar between the group who used their nondominant hand and the group who used their dominant hand, ps > .05. Overall, the present findings suggest that when a standard administration is precluded, it is reasonable to use the nondominant hand to complete the VR subtest and to make use of the WMS-IV norms for interpretation.