International Journal of Primatology, Vol. 20, No. 6, 1999 Hand Preferences in Different Tasks by Tufted Capuchins (Cebus apella) Giovanna Spinozzi1,2 and Valentina Truppa1 Received November 11, 1998; revised April 2, 1999; accepted April 28, 1999 We examined hand preferences in 25 tufted capuchins (Cebus apella) in three tasks. The hole task involved a single action of reaching for food in a hole. The horizontal panel and the vertical panel tasks required the alignment of two apertures, by moving or lifting a panel, to reach for food in a hole. We found a significant group-level right-hand preference for reaching actions in the hole and in the horizontal panel tasks, but not in the vertical panel task, in which the food retrieval implied the complementary use of both hands. No significant hand bias emerged for moving or lifting actions with high visuospatial components. There is a stronger hand preference in more complex manual activity-coordinated bimanual hand use for food re- trieval—than in other unimanual measures. We discuss the results in the context of previous reports on primate laterality. INTRODUCTION There is growing and renewed interest in the question of whether nonhuman primate species exhibit asymmetries of the manual functions comparable to human hand preference. Since laterality in hand use is considered an index of functional cerebral asymmetries (Kimura, 1979), the aim of comparative research on primate laterality is to shed light on possible precursors of human hemispheric specialization. 1 Istituto di Psicologia, CNR, Reparto di Psicologia Comparata, 00197, Rome, Italy. 2To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: spinozzi@pml.it. KEY WORDS: Cebus apella; handedness; laterality; manual preference. 827 0164-0291/99/1200-0827$16.00/0 © 1999 Plenum Publishing Corporation