posted
I was recently assigned a research topic, of my choice (to a certain extent) for school. I have to write a 10-12 page paper on the topic. I was considering choosing discrimination against left-handed people as my topic, but a quick trip to google revealed only 2 or 3 potentially useful websites, although I didn't try very long or very hard to find others. Do any of you know any good books on the topic, or whether you think that there is enough information out there to write a decent-length paper on?
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posted
Bah, I know of a good book we have, I can't find it at the moment... But I'll be sure to tell you if I find it.
Perhaps you could look into the painting of the sisteen chapel, monalisa, and other rennisance works for hidden lefty ness things.
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my daughter, a nephew and the news editor at the paper where I work are all left-handed.
I haven't noticed discrimination, but rather difficulty in using items designed for right-handed people. You should see my 8-year-old daughter trying to open a can holding the can opener in her right hand and reaching over with her left hand to turn it.
I really gotta get her a left-handed can opener.
(edited to add) I think I recall my mom saying that in the past, when left-handed kids were learning to write in school, teachers would force them to learn to write with their right hands. My sister was ambidextrous, sort of. She would write part of a letter with one hand and finish with the other hand. Like the circle of the "a" with one hand and the straight part of the same "a" with the other hand. Her teacher basically told her to "pick a hand" and stick with it, not necessarily the right hand. She could have gone either way, but went with the right hand.
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My best friend and I used to get top scores in high school, and we're both right handed girls. Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Yeah, it's not really active discrimination, but I'd say the fact that the world is centered around right-handers is discrimination. Just like not having a wheelchair ramp.
Frisco, at least two of the five valedictorians in my class were left-handed (I have no idea about the other three). Assuming 10% lefties in the general population, we were over-represented by a factor of four. Left-handers rule!
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I've found the world is actually much more forgiving of left-handedness than it was even 15 or 20 years ago. Specifically with common use items like scissors. I think you would actually have to look hard to not find a pair of universal scissors these days. Though I do still find I have problems with tools I am unfamiliar with, such as handheld paper cutters (no, not scissors) and there was this whiteout tool that I couldn't figure out how to use, but it turns out it was because it was specifically designed to be easy for a righty. I got made fun of for that one.
And then of course you can look at how most major machinery is designed to be mainly operated with the right hand (cars, airplanes (from the left seat anyway), leaf blowers, drill presses, etc.), and our system of writing forces lefties to adapt their style or drag their hands through ink and pencil lead.
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I know that my great grandfather was beaten by his teacher for writing left handed.
I wonder what things we're doing now that people will look back on in two or three generations and think "my god, people can be such idiots:.
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Helps with fencing immensely, actually. Significantly fewer people know how to successfully land their wonder moves when the opponent's are isn't on the right.
Incidentally, is Aerin your main screenname? I'm thinking I remember you from somewhere, but you don't post much. Maybe just because we're both in the July '02 EnderCon class.
[edit: You totally walked right into that one, No-way-mon. ]
posted
Anyways, Happy Camper, I think that so-called universal scissors still favor right-handed people because of the way the cutting edges are set up. It's possible to use them as a lefty, but they aren't as effective.
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When I was a kid I used can openers as described above, and unscrewed the handles of god knows how many wall mounted pencil sharpeners.
I actually had to go to a perceptual motor clinic to use my right arm and hand for much of anything.
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>>Scott R Said>>In Italy, they still smack kids who use their left hands to write.
Well, I didn't smack my kids for it, but I did and still do correct them when they try to do something left-handed. For kids, it's all new and awkward to them - developing gross and fine motor skills. Any kid can be right- or left-handed, imho, depending on what the parents insist upon or allow.
But since lefties have a shorter life expectancy, and to avoid the generall hassle of everything, we insist upon right handedness.
Righty, here. But I do shoot archery and play billiards left handed.
Also, a neat trick is writing two hands at a time (inspired by Johnny Tremain)... Try this... have 2 papers side by side, have a pen in each hand. With your dominant hand, start writing normally - left to right. at the exact same time with your non-dominant hand, write the exact same text right-to left. Your non-dominant hand is generally able to use your dominant hand as a crutch and is able to scribble out semi-legible, yet inverted text. Keep practicing and the fine motor skills of your non-dominant will get better and better. (though it's a useless activity, other than just being able to write backwards with your non-dominant).
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So Brian, you believe that using the left hand as the dominant hand *results* in a shorter life span? Left handed people do, on average, have a shorter lifespan than right handed people, but somehow I doubt it's as a result of using their left hands too much.
Handedness is apparent even in the womb, by the way, and I've read (although I don't have any citations handy) that forcing a child to use their non-dominant hand as though it were their dominant hand often results in learning disabilities.
I think that forcing handedness on a child is doing them a gross disservice, personally.
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I believe there are actual insurance statistics That say lefties are more accident prone and don't always live as long due to accidental death. But I don't think they can actually put it on a life insurance questionare.
It's a convienent excuse for my inherent klutzyness.
I never thought about how I use a can opener, I'm going to have to think about it next time I do it. However, I learned to cut, with my left hand, using right handed scissors. It is totally bizzare because I *know* it isn't ergonomically correct, but to this day I prefer right handed sewing sccisors (the large orange Fiskars) to left handed ones. Mom eventually got around to buying me lefthanded scissors. (In the Fiskars brand the Lefty ones had red handles instead of orange for a while.) The lefty ones just never felt right though.
Oh, and HC, you are a left handed engineer? Do you realize how few left-handed engineers there are out there? You bring the grand total of lefthanded engineers I have ever known (including myself) to four.
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On another subject, my great grandmother was lefthanded and they tied her left hand behind her back to make her write right-handed.
And, I can right mirror image from right to left with my left hand, pretty easily, like Da Vinci. It tripped the people sitting next to me in classes out. I can do both with my right hand too as far as putting my brain in the correct thinking mode, but I just don't have the fine motor skills with my right hand for writing.
I always loved Bach while playing the piano because he was one of the few composers that gave equal technically difficult playing time to the left hand. I played his Invention #4 which although a simple enough peice that they include it in student anthologies, you never hear anyone play at piano recitals and competitions because there is a three or four measure trill in the left hand.
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That's really cool about the mirror writing AJ. When I finally get to meet you, I'm going to want to watch you do that.
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I believe I've read that lefties being more accident prone is due to the world being set up for right-handed people. But I don't have any references to that handy. No pun intended. Anyway, it might not be because lefties are inherently more clumsy, just that they're trying to survive in a world where everything is against them.
I can write almost as well with my left hand as my right... but since my handwriting is atrocious either way, that's not saying much. Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Well it has to do with brain dominance Kama, (there are loads of books written on the subject, and I've read quite a few of them.) Left handed people although a really small percentage of the population are like 20 times more likely to be found in artistic fields like sculpting and graphic design and painting, because they are generally far more Right Brain dominant. It is normally extremely Left Brained people that go into engineering. So you find far fewer lefthanded engineers on average than even in the regular population.
I am <grin> the only lefthanded female engineer I have ever heard of. (If anyone knows of any others, I'd love to talk to them!) I knew two other guys in our entire college of engineering that were left handed. Grin, one of them is Steve, and the other one was a good friend named Julio. My friend Lynn was Julio's gf, now she's married to him. We used to do a lot of stuff together with them, but when Lynn went out to dinner with the three of us, it was the only time in her life she had to worry about where she was sitting because of HER elbows!
I think it is second nature to most lefties to scope out the best place to sit at a table (On an end where your left elbow isn't going to interfere with anyone else) while eating because otherwise there are normally accidental elbow wars. I have enough problems with getting the food to my mouth anyway. I don't need any additional complications!
But, since I've been out of college, I think I know of one left handed guy up in my company's engineering department but he's the only person I've added to the tally.
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Re LH shorter lifespans: I think it's more that it's a right-handed world out there. But it's just statistics I've heard.
re LH engineers: one of my favorite lefty quotes went something along the lines of since the opposite hemisphere of the brain controls a particular side of the body (generally) only left-handed people are in there right minds. left or right handed, I think "right brained" engineers make the best ones!
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quote: Oldfield (1971 as reported in Geschwind & Behan, 1984), using the standard Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, reported that 90% of women are right-handed while 86% of men are right-handed. Oldfield claimed that the 4% difference is significant. Ellis, Ellis, and Marshall (1988) used the very same Edinburgh Inventory and failed to reach any significant sex difference. Their study suggested that any difference in left-handedness and the sexes must be smaller than 1.5%. However, the Ellis et al. study used only a few hundred subjects.
If we accept that there are more male left-handers than female left-handers, it seems that the chemical which causes the shift to right-brain dominance is male-linked. The authors chose to study the influence of testosterone in high levels. Stress during pregnancy can cause fetal testosterone levels to rise in rats (Ward & Weisz, 1980 as reviewed in James, 1987). In the womb, both males and females share the same maternal and placental hormones. Once the testes develop, testosterone rises to high levels. An increase in testosterone in the womb, combined with the extra testosterone from the testes, could cause slow development in the left-hemisphere. This would explain why left-handedness would be more common in males. The strength of the link between testosterone and slow growth stems not from prenatal studies of hormone effects on cortical structure, but from postnatal studies. Hormones administered to the rat fetus after birth were able to alter asymmetries in the right brain and change tail posture, an indication of cerebral laterality (Diamond,1984 and Rosen et al, 1983 as review in Geschwind and Galaburda, 1987a). Scientists have not yet proved that prenatal testosterone causes abnormal development.
posted
It does exist, but I don't think we see it in the US (or Canada?) as much as in Europe. The reason why there probably isn't a lot of literature is because most people who were born left handed are trained from infancy not to use the left hand.
When my mother in law was here, and my 20 month old daughter happened to be using her left hand to eat with a spoon, my MIL immediately took the spoon out of her left hand and put it in her right hand. I shool my head, smiled, and put it back in her left hand.
I talked to my husband after that, and he agreed with her actions He told me all sorts of things about how favored people are on the 'right hand of god' and so left handed were of a more evil nature. I told him I disagreed with him a lot, and brought out a bit of evidence. The subject was sort of dropped there, and didn't come up again because A)it is the women who take care of such things, B)our children, like us, have naturally chosen their right hand, and C) his mother went back home to Russia.
My mother wonders if she was born left handed, because she knows her mother did the 'switch hands whenever child has object in left hand' thing. Her mother was born in Holland. Even though raised in the US, I'm sure that the cultural influences from my grandmother's parents were pretty strong.
I honestly can't say this about all of Europe, but those are my experiences.
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Do you all think left-handedness affects the way the brain develops? Or do you think that the way the brain develops affects hand dominance?
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posted
My five-year-old son writes and draws with his right hand, but throws and bats left-handed (and quite well, I might add). He also sucks his right thumb.
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posted
I think that one's natural handedness is probably reflective of brain development. I wouldn't be surprised if forcing somone to use their non-dominant hand as though it were their dominant hand will result in changes in the brain, but from what I've read on the subject, those changes don't seem to be benign.
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It appears to be a bi-modal distribution. The lefties that can adapt thrive, often in more prominent positions than their righty counterparts (there are a lot of US presidents that were lefthanded for example.) The ones that can't get shuffled to the bottom of the stack and are often downtrodden never to emerge. The bottom of the stack ones often have problems with dyslexia among other things.
quote: Do you all think left-handedness affects the way the brain develops? Or do you think that the way the brain develops affects hand dominance?
Don't know about that, but I do remember reading some years ago that left-handed people develop language centers in both hemispheres of their brain, instead of in only the left hemisphere as right-handers do. Therefore, if a lefty suffers a stroke or other brain injury, while they're more likely to develop aphasia, they're also more able to recover from it. Pretty cool.
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"The one that got away" was a lefty that I dated for 5 years... and I must admit she was a fascinating person.
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I'm not surprised that there are a lot of left handed people here, since the intelligence level here is greater than the population at large.
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quote: talked to my husband after that, and he agreed with her actions He told me all sorts of things about how favored people are on the 'right hand of god' and so left handed were of a more evil nature.
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And as far as being born that way, or something that is in the brain, for a personal anecdote. I broke my arm at the age of 3 or so, right when I was learning how to write. My mom had just started noticing that I was favoring my left hand, before I fell off some cattle fencing that I was climbing on and broke it. As soon as the 8 weeks were up and it started to heal, I went right back to using my left hand again. (They didn't realize it was broken until my regular pediatric checkup so I never ended up in a cast since it was set ok.)
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I was stunned too. His other ideas of parenting are not so strange. I mean, he is a good father who plays with his kids and talks to them. This is just part of the culture he came from.
In fact, it is one of those things that has made me think about how people can be pre-concieved based on singular instances. This idea, the switching of hands if they are left-handed, is inconcievable right now. One might assume that if a parent does this, they must be a bad parent over all. I don't think this is necessarily the case. I believe many loving and gentle parents did this to their children in the past, because that is what they told was best for their child.
Vovka has been in America a lot longer, now. I'm not sure what his opinion would be should the issue come up again. But when those things are taught as absolute truth (In atheist Soviet Russia, no less) from when they are very young, it is kind of hard to change the idea.
Soviet Russia was also where they made 1 year olds sit on potty seats until they peed or pooped. This happened at home and in every institution (daycare/pre-school). On the other hand, Soviet Russia is also where the best after school and summer programs free to the families for children existed. It was there that after school Vovka studied drawing, photography, film-making, etc. He talks about summer camp with great nostalgia.
It has given me an interesting way to look at things.
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My daughter (the oldest) is left-handed and I asked her about any problems she noticed. She said computers in libraries and in schools were annoying because there was almost no way to move the mouse to the other side so she could use it with her left hand.
However, she has adapted and simply uses her right hand 99% of the time.
Scissors were a big problem for my best friend when we were in school, in remembering that I buy scissors that aren't handed so there is no trouble with my daughter using them around the house. Fiskars sewing scissors are awesome, with the new designed handle - even my mom with her bad arthritis can use them comfortably.
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Makes you wonder, doesn't it, what things we take as givens that would seem equally preposterous, bordering on abusive to someone raised in a different culture.
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Go wireless mice! Of course they would walk off anywhere but a private home or office, but thanks to them I can do ambidextrous mousing.
I don't change the button settings, although I know you can in the software. Left clicks are still on the left and right clicks are still on the right.
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Brian, what exactly do you mean by "the general hassle of everything"? I've been left-handed my entire life (...um...of course...*smacks forehead*) and the only thing I have to complain about is smudginess on the side of my palm from having to lay my hand over what i just wrote. A hassle only if i can't find a sink.
And if one of your children was naturally left-handed...i don't think artificially making him/her write right-handed is going to miraculously increase their life-span...they're still naturally left-handed, aren't they?
AJ, i can't use left-handed scissors to save my life! I must have adjusted pretty early on (which is odd because my mom got me left-handed scissors early...) to the righties.
*gotta learn to refresh the thread...gotta learn to refresh the thread...*
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I could imagine that a 'naturally' left-handed person forced to be a righty may be MORE likely to hurt themselves.
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Of all you lefties, how many were incouraged/took your own initiative to learn to use a computer mouse left handed? Do to standard PC stations throughout my education, the mouse is always on the right, so thats how I learned it.
I tried configuring my buttons opposite and using it in my left hand once... it was awkward.
I think being a leftie in a rightie world gives me a little more ability to adapt. (nothing significant, but still its there)
Any comments on this?
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posted
You probably did a lot of cutting in school, where right hand scissors may have been. OTOH, I seem to remember that the scissors at my schools were ambidextrous. That is, both handles were tiny little uncomfortable circles.
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He told me all sorts of things about how favored people are on the 'right hand of god' and so left handed were of a more evil nature. I told him I disagreed with him a lot, and brought out a bit of evidence. The subject was sort of dropped there, and didn't come up again because A)it is the women who take care of such things, B)our children, like us, have naturally chosen their right hand, and C) his mother went back home to Russia.
