The Importance of Being Right: Handedness and Brain Asymmetry: The Right Shift Theory. M. Annett. 2002. Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press. 396 pp., $80.00

Extract

Marian Annett's recent book on handedness and cerebral dominance was published a dozen years after Efron's (1990) declaration that the era of hemispheric specialization had ended. Why did that era not end for Annett? One answer is that Annett's work differed from that of the majority of laterality researchers. Even during the heyday of laterality studies, Annett remained aloof from the mainstream endeavor of characterizing left- and right-hemisphere functions. Instead, Annett pursued a line of laterality research that dealt primarily with handedness in the general population. She accumulated large quantities of data about human handedness and used those data to support her right-shift (RS) theory of the genetics of handedness. With the publication of her new book, the interested reader has convenient access to the fruits of a remarkably focused and durable research career.