Post subject: Are you left or right handed?

There are more left-handers in the world than previously thought.
SYDNEY: A study conducted by researchers from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane states that there are more left-handed people in the world than one can possibly imagine.

The findings to be published in the journal Laterality, states that considering the number of people who use their left hands to throw a ball, strike a match or use a pair of scissors, the world looked more left-handed rather than right-handed.

Experiments conducted on more than 11,000 adults from 32 countries by the team in association with two senior researchers from the US, revealed that on being asked to throw a ball, hold a racket, unscrew a lid, strike a match, use a hammer, toothbrush, scissors, knife, screwdriver or fork, most of the people used their left hands.

"Most people think of handedness as being based on which hand you write with but there are a lot of different ways to measure handedness," Australian researcher Sarah Medland was quoted by ABC Science Online as saying.

Further studies indicated that a large proportion wrote with their right hand but tended to use their left hand for other things. Many in the group also included those who were born left-handed but were forced to learn writing with their right hand.

These belonged to the older generation and were more likely to be women, and hailing from countries like Belgium, Cyprus, France, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Portugal, South America and Spain, and the Middle East, considered as having a more formal and conformist culture, rather than from so-called non-formal or permissive countries, like Australia, Canada, Finland, Italy, Holland, UK and US.

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I don't think it is.

I also can't understand how their criteria for categorising countries like this...

"These belonged to the older generation and were more likely to be women, and hailing from countries like Belgium, Cyprus, France, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Portugal, South America and Spain, and the Middle East, considered as having a more formal and conformist culture, rather than from so-called non-formal or permissive countries, like Australia, Canada, Finland, Italy, Holland, UK and US."

Would you agree with the above??

I am right handed, but since a small child, eat with my fork in the right hand & the knife in the left, contrary to the way that the majority of people do it. I simply can't eat with the knife in the right hand - don't know why!

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I am right handed but apparently I do some tasks as though I were left handed (eg. unscrewing a bottle). Does this mean that really, deep down, I am actually left handed?

Aaron

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altyfc wrote:

(eg. unscrewing a bottle). Does this mean that really, deep down, I am actually left handed?

Aaron

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I'm actually right handed but try to do many things with my left hand, the theory I use is that it's a new skill and will overall increase my intelligence (not to mention it'll be useful if I ever lose my right hand )

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I hear using hands more often stimulates your brain.

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When I was a kid, I got a dartboard for Christmas. Around the same time, I hurt a finger in my right hand and my arm was in a sling. I ended up playing darts all the time (you know how you like to play with presents to death at Christmas, when you're a kid ) with my left hand, to such an extent that I pretty much got as good with my left as I was with my right. It just shows how easily the body can be trained to do something that it might not feel a natural urge to do.

Aaron

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That's a pretty interesting story; actually, the guy who lost his arm in Utah(was it Arizona?) was saying something similar. He was right handed and he lost his arm, but after a while, he was able to write with his left. We may need to take into account that he is pretty young though.

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I think like anything though it's a skill, and if you practise it enough you'll form new nural pathways in the brain improving your ability.

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I like this discussion; I just moved this to "General Healthcare Discussions."

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Right-handed

A person who is right-handed is more dextrous with his or her right hand than with their left hand: they will write with their right hand, and probably also use this hand for tasks such as personal care, cooking, and so on. Approximately 90% of the population is right-handed, while most of the remaining are left-handed. A very small percentage of the population can use both hands equally well; a person with this ability is deemed to be ambidextrous.

Throughout history being right-handed was considered as normal - the Latin word dexter meant "right" and is associated with skill. Hence the many prejudicial connotations became associated with right handedness: skillful, diligent, dextrous, deft. The associated left brain hemisphere that is said to be more active in right-handed people, has been found to be correlated with linguistic and logical skill.

In German schools decades ago and in some American schools, left handed children were forced to write right-handed. A 77 year old man in St. Louis, Missouri commented years ago that he wished he had not been "broken" since he does everything else left-handed and would be considered a true left-hander. So his son, who is a true right hander in everything BUT writing was allowed to write left-handed. Although the son has much better drawing and artistic talent than his father, he wishes to be able to write right-handed since it is a more natural way to form the letters.

The document was originally published at Wikipedia and the document is licensed under GNU Free Document License. If you'd like to find out more about obesity, you might be interested in visiting this page in Wikipedia.

Any comment on this? Anyone?

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Kids in the UK used to be forced to write with their right hands too - not any more.

I must say that most left handers write with their hands in a very strange position - sort of curled round, & writing from the 'top' rather than underneath the text, and their writing tends to slope backwards. I wonder why they do this, as it should be just as easy to write as right handers do?

Could they have been Arabic in their last incarnation?? Arabic is written from right to left! (I've always wanted to ask that question!! )

You do find that a high percentage of creative, artistic people write with their left hand - right brain dominant.