Footedness across the age span among Brazilian right- and left-handers.

Previous cross-sectional surveys have reported a decreasing prevalence of left-footedness with increasing age. Bell and Gabbard attributed this pattern to a developmental process wherein the right hemisphere ages earlier than the left, leading to a decline in left-footedness among older individuals. A major flaw in this hypothesis is that age-related data were derived exclusively from right-handed samples. To test the generality of the hypothesis we obtained foot preferences from 1462 right and 172 left-handed Brazilians ranging from 10 to 94 years of age. In only one of the three analyses did dextrals show the predicted age-related decline. Together with accelerating trends towards left-footedness among older males and nonlinear trends among left-handers as a group, these results do not sustain the basic assumptions implicit in the right hemisphere aging hypothesis.