Factor analyses of handedness items in left and right-handed intellectually gifted and nongifted children

Handedness questionnaire items from the General Scale of the Lateral Preference Schedule were administered to 423 intellectually gifted and 226 nongifted children to investigate the underlying processes that contribute to laterality. Handedness items were factor analyzed using principal components (PC) analysis with varimax rotation. PC analyses computed separately for gifted and nongifted left and right-handed writers yielded very different factor structures. Left-handers (regardless of gifted status) tended to have factor structures marked by items that loaded saliently on more than one factor. Whereas a four factor solution best fit the data for the nongifted left-handers, a three factor solution was the best fit for the gifted left-handed children. The factor structure for the left-handed gifted children was marked by two factors where the item 'draw' was the only item to load both positively and saliently, a pattern not evident among the nongifted left-handers. These results suggested different underlying patterns contributing to laterality among these groups of children.