brit. Studie, demnächst auf New Scientist: Wer als 10 Wochen alter Foetus am rechten Daumen nuckelt, wird Rechtshänder, basta!
The hand you favour as a 10-week-old fetus is the hand you will favour for the rest of your life. The finding comes as a surprise because it had been thought that lifelong hand preferences did not develop until a child was 3 or 4 years old. A team led by Peter Hepper of the Fetal Behaviour Research Centre at Queen's University, Belfast in the UK reached this conclusion after studying ultrasound scans of 1000 fetuses. In one study, nine out of 10 fetuses at 15 weeks' gestation preferred to suck their right thumbs. Hepper's team followed 75 of those fetuses after birth, and found that at 10 to 12 years old all 60 of the right thumb-suckers were right-handed, while 10 of the 15 left thumb-suckers were left-handed and the rest right-handed.