Left handed... but not always in my right mind.

Is it just me… or is it a left-handed thing?

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:48:22 -0500

As a result of our question on Left Handed Kissing Confusion, we got loads of responses about other things left-handers find awkward but have never really connected with them being left-handed. Apart from the problem of greeting people with a kiss and getting it wrong, we also received comments on other things that made us think….is it just me or is there more to it? Some of the things that were mentioned were:

It seems that a lot of the quirks that we have are a result of being left-handed in a right-handed world. Listed below are some of the responses we received from our Club Members when we asked . “Is it just me…?” See how many you identify with. The quirk that started it all was social kissing, and you can read a selection of anecdotes about that on our kissing confusion page.

It was only recently that I realised why, when I try clothes on in a shop and put them back on the rack, they’re always facing the wrong way because, I’m LEFT-HANDED.~ Simone Hurst

I’ve noticed that even when loading the dishwasher, I start on the right, but my husband, who is right handed, loads on the left first, and folding sheets together is a nightmare, he folds the opposite to me, and if I don’t remember the sheet gets twisted not folded. ~ Carol Wiltshire

One really embarrassing thing I do at dinner parties is drink from the person next to me’s glass. I just reach out with my left hand and lift and its not until I see that I’m getting strange looks that I realise what I’m doing. I tell myself I won’t do it again then I do. Also the cheese board! I just dread someone asking me to cut a piece for them because I just can’t do it, it usually ends up on the table and I feel stupid. What should be an enjoyable night out is something I dread. ~ Evelyn Rose
When first seated at a dinner party or restaurant table, I always have to wait for the person to my left to take a sip of their drink, or eat their bread roll to make sure I don’t take the wrong one by mistake! ~ Lauren, UK
Microscopes!! The fine focus is always on the right!! its probably just me but I use them all day and it drives me mad (boss too mean to buy me a proper one). ~ Debbie, UK
Am also a glider pilot, and there are an unusual number of left-handed pilots, particularly the really good ones e.g. national & world champions. We tend to be better & more comfortable at turning right, whereas the right-handed pilots are better at turning to the left. ~ Sarah Platt

I just wonder if anyone out there is like me. When I’m out with friends walking

I have to be on the left side of the road when walking and on the left of people

when I’m talking otherwise I feel uneasy. ~ Jay

Receiving change from shop assistant – I nearly always find myself struggling to hold it without the coins falling all over the floor. (I’m talking about a combination of notes and coins). I think it’s because people naturally hand change as if the person receiving will hold out their right hand – but I hold out my left. ~ Emma Hurley
I start painting a wall left to right, both the right handers in my family go right to left, and they couldn’t figure out why I did it “backwards” as they called it. It wasn’t backwards for me. They finally figured it out. It was “left-handed logic” as they call it every time they think I’m doing something the wrong way.
Just to let you know I have just been decorating and was papering the room from right to left and find it very difficult to work that way around rather than left to right ~ M. Izzard
I don’t know what the odds are, but I’d love to know how many left handed people are also directionally challenged like me - i.e., have trouble with north south east and west and distances, and are constantly having to make u-turns when going somewhere. I’ve had this problem all my life and have often been asked what it feels like to “be lost” and am I scared when it happens. I just tell them, I don’t have a problem with it, I just consider it going on an adventure and I eventually get where I going . It just takes a little bit longer and I consider the new things I see along the way a learning experience.~Dot Sale, Ontario, Canada.
When going to a cinema or theatre I am always drawn like a magnet to the left hand side to find a seat. If I have to sit on the right hand side I don’t feel comfortable all night and just sit there thinking how much better I would enjoy the film etc if I was on the left. Is this common with other people? ~ Maureen Elliott
I put on a belt backwards, as in using my left hand and inserting it in the right side. Most of the time its hard to notice a difference, but there’s belts out there, like ones with buckles that end up being upside down. I know it’s not just me because two other left-handers I know do the exact same thing, so I was wondering how many other left-handers do this as well? ~ Scott Farrar, USA
I just bought this new belt with a designer buckle. I started putting the belt through the straps in my jeans as usual, but when I wanted to close the buckle, I discovered that the buckle logo was upside down. “How weird”, I said to myself, and then it dawned on me: this belt was designed for righties! Somehow I, as a lefty, have an innate impulse to thread a buckle through my jeans straps beginning at the opposite side from that of a RH! (My old belt didn’t cause me any trouble of this sort, since it didn’t matter in what way you turned the buckle). Before the time of the CDs, when one still had LP records, I used to have mine on a shelf beneath my record player. I’ve always been meticulous about sorting things alphabetically, and I used to do that with my records, too. Somehow, though, my friends would consider my “shelf order” strange, since I put all artists whose name/group name began with an “A”, at the right-hand side of the shelf, which was totally natural to me. Couldn’t get it what was so strange about that, until recently when I came to think of the fact that it must have been a lefty instinct, to do it “the RIGHT way round”! ~ Helene, Sweden

Among a million of things I just can’t do in this right-handed world, here’s one that made me really ask to myself….is it just me? I am just not able to uncork a bottle of wine, simply ’cause I unscrew in the wrong direction. The cork opener never makes it into the cork, no matter how hard I try to push it! My husband makes fun of me, saying that I always use my left-handedness as an excuse just because I’m not able to do stuff….Will they ever understand? ~Sara, Italy

When taking “hanging files” (where the papers are laid sideways) out of filing cabinets and opening them up, the papers are always upside down for me when a right-hander has been doing the filing. I know now that I mustn’t slip new papers into hanging files without first checking the direction of the other pages – which are always upside down to my way of thinking! Luckily, I have a personal filing cabinet, where only I file the papers, so every file opens with documents the correct way up for me! ~ Laura, UK
Myself and one of my best friends were trying on clothes and she wanted to try on the shorts I was wearing-with a belt. When she got them on and was trying to use the belt, she was having trouble getting it undone so she could do it. She made the comment “you and your left handedness.” I had not realized she was having trouble with doing the belt until she said that and I asked what she meant. Evidently, I had my belt “backwards”. I have to wonder how many other “leftisms” there are that we (lefties) are unaware of? ~ Anonymous, USA
It seems my right-handed husband and four kids have all “learned” from me! My husband learned to change and dress our four children the left-handed way since I had the baby’s rooms set up for my convenience. Kitchen activities were also done “my” way. My kids are now in their 20′s and my daughter commented that she does many activities like a lefty because she learned from me. She says it’s my fault she’s all messed up but I just tell her I did her a favour because she’s skilled with both hands! Anything we leftie’s teach our kids or spouses will be noticed by other right-handed people! ~ Doreen Place
I have recently realised that one reason I have difficulty with the new chip and pin system is that I put my card in “the wrong way round” – the automatic way for me as a left-handed person but not for the machine – created by and for right-handed people I think?Is this something lots of you have already discovered?! ~ Barbara Robinson
I just wanted to say I felt so much better after reading all the things we left handers have in common. I constantly have problems with handshakes, belts, crossing someone’s path (am I supposed to go to the right of them or to the left?) and of course the kissing! I also appreciated the people who visualize things in the opposite way. I recently graduated from law school and I was once told by a professor that although I reached the right conclusion I came at the problem with “backward thinking logic”. I also organized all of my notebooks in school so that they opened backwards; my classmates never wanted to borrow notes! I also have problems with outside water faucets — I always try to turn it left to turn it off. And when I read magazines I always flip through them back to front. ~Lesley Holloway
The quirk I had trouble with wouldn’t have been noticed if I hadn’t been in the military (US Air Force). As a lefty, I’m more comfortable carrying my purse on my right shoulder, leaving my left arm free. In fact, I find it almost impossible to keep a shoulder bag ON my left shoulder when I try. Here’s the trouble — salutes are done with the right hand and thus, the right arm must be free at all times. It’s even in the regulations that purses, umbrellas, briefcases, etc., should all be carried on the left. I had trouble with that for the entire time I was in the Air Force. I tended to just carry my purses in my left hand (even the shoulder bags), as they would never stay on the shoulder. Very frustrating! My next comment concerns the preference for sitting on the left side of theaters. I don’t feel uncomfortable if I have to sit on the right side, but I do tend to automatically go to the left when entering a theater. This turns out to be an advantage. Studies have shown that the large majority of the population goes to the right when a choice is presented (like going into a theater or choosing from two lines for an amusement park ride) — probably due to handedness. An authority on Disney World has even put into his book about the Park that you’ll spend much less time standing in line if you veer to the left when presented with two lines for the ride! So, go with your quirk and veer to the left — it will almost assuredly be quicker/shorter/less-crowded over there! ~ Lynn, Denver, CO USA
Regarding shaking with the left hand, I am both a lefty and in the Guides. Guides and Scouts around the world shake left handed, which is perfectly natural to me. Unfortunately it makes things even harder when I have to shake hands in a non-Guiding situation, I am even less likely to remember to offer my right hand. This has meant that in professional situations, I’ve found out that quite senior people were Scouts or Guides and/or left handed and ended up leaving my boss totally out of the conversation as we then talk about handedness or Scouting. ~A. Kerr

Is it just me? Everything at my workstation in my job flows right to left!

It drives my co-workers crazy when they come looking for something at

my area. They think my workstation set up is “backwards”. I just assumed

its a “leftie” quirk. Same thing in my kitchen by the way…. ~ Colleen, USA

I always find that if I have to flick through a book I hold it in my right hand and flick the pages with my left starting at the back of the book. It drives me insane when I want to use a dictionary because I think of the alphabet going forwards but then I’m flicking with the letters going backwards. Whenever I fill up my motorbike I have to go to a pump that is on my left other wise it just doesn’t feel right. Unfortunately my car has the fuel cap on the right hand side and I frequently get myself tangled up with the pumps. I also us one of those flip open wallets and always find it difficult to put notes and credit cards away without turning it upside down then everything ends up falling out! ~ Pauline Woodhall, UK
A constant annoyance for me is the placement of receipts when signing credit card transactions. Cashiers almost always angle the receipt towards my right hand, so I inevitably have to re-angle it towards my left hand before signing. This can sometimes be a problem if the cashier keeps a finger on the receipt (usually due to a draft from a fan or doorway). The most amazing incident of this nature was a few months ago in a well known UK DIY store: the cashier placed the receipt angled towards my right hand, I re-angled the receipt towards my left, but before I could put pen to paper the cashier re-angled the receipt towards my right again! ~ Michele Wilkinson, Cambs
My gripe is with the till desks, usually petrol stations, that secure the pen for the signing of the receipt with a piece of tatty string that is attached to what ever on the right side and too short for the lefthander. The assistant also offers the receipt to me addressing my right hand. I have found that banks are no better they just have posh ball chain that’s too short instead of string ~ Bob Beaney
I was recently looking into purchasing a new horse. When I lifted his leg to look at his hoof he tried to kick out. This had never happened to me with my other two horses so I thought there was something wrong. The owner informed me that I was picking up his hoof by touching the inside of his leg. He said most people touch the horse on the outside of the leg and this is why he was spooked. I never realized it but being left-handed I naturally reach inside the leg, whereas it is awkward for a right-handed person to reach inside, so therefore would pick up the leg from the outside. Also, when I was a kid, my mom asked me to put up the pencil sharpener (one of those crank kinds). I did as I was told. A few days later my dad complained that he could not sharpen his pencil as the sharpener was upside down!!! ~ Linda Vonhof, Westhampton Beach, NY
Is it me? i’m the only left hander at college, and if I’ve been using the computers I get a lot of complaints because the mouse is on the wrong side of the computer for the boring people of this world.~ Bev Syson, Ilkeston
My ex-husband and I moved to a new home and since he was travelling for work I had to unpack everything. We lived in that house for 3 ½ years and he complained the whole time that nothing was in the “right” place. I just kept saying “welcome to my world” with a big smile on my face. I hadn’t even realized I had set everything up left-handed – I just put everything where is was supposed to go. ~ Jodi Olson
When I am drinking especially in a pub or club I feel that if I don’t hold the glass in my left hand that I am not getting the full enjoyment of the drink. Sometimes I find that I am drinking with my right hand and realise that something is not going quite right and have to change! ~ David Robinson

It works the same way when walking past someone but don’t know which side to let them pass you on, so you end up doing a little dance and bounce on both feet before one person takes the lead and chooses a side. the difference is, it’s with your neck and so you end up looking stupider! Although it can be quite humorous ~ Laura Piplica, UK

Whenever I read a book and the author describes a scene, I always find later, as the plot unfolds that I have visualised it completely the wrong way round, as a mirror image. Is it me? ~ Linda Dainton, UK
Is it only me? I run my own business from home which does involve sending information by post to prospective clients. When the information I send runs to more than one page I like everyone else staple the pages together. Often, too often the actual staple doesn’t penetrate the paper. Is this a fault that other left handers have encountered and if it is how have they overcome this annoying problem?~ Bob Westecott
I joined a dance class (Line-Dancing) and had a hard time following everyone…All the steps were lead on the right foot , Of course I instinctively started on my left and I was always a step behind everyone…I was so ashamed, I couldn’t keep up. ~ Marty
Handshakes! I naturally put out my left hand…d’oh! Oh the trials of living in a right handed world… ~ Nancy Hopkins, UK
I have difficulties with locks and keys is it just me ? ~ Frances Todd, UK
Walking in the out door. I am always doing this. It drives my son crazy! Or walking on the wrong side of the staircase. ~ Cindy Timo
I was wondering , growing up was it difficult for you to learn how to tie your shoes properly? Especially learning from a rightie? I ended up making two bunny ears and tying them together rather than the loop around and pull. Also making check marks (ticks). Did people tell you growing up checking each others papers that your checks were “backwards”? ~ Jennifer, The Bronx
I used to hold all my four children on my right side, leaving my left hand (a working one) free. So I am absolutely sure that all the discussions about women carrying their babies on their left side so that children could hear their mothers’ hearts beating are just nonsense! It is just a matter of right- or left-handedness. ~ Irina Radetskaya, Russia

Thank you to everyone who responded to our question so far – it is great to be part of such a helpful worldwide community of left-handers and we look forward to receiving your further comments – please use the form below.

- See more at: http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/lh-info/is-it-me.html#sthash.xg8CHVBT.dpuf

The effects of making a left-hander write right-handed

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:37:39 -0500

Natural left-handers should always be left to develop in their own way and be allowed to write left-handed if that is their choice. Forcing them to change hands and write right-handed can have very bad effects in later life as well as being traumatic at the time and ruining their handwriting!

The dominant writing hand is not just a physical thing to do with controlling a pen but a mental thing to do with the way the brain is organised and where certain functions occur. The brain is “cross-wired” to the body so the left handed side of the brain controls the right hand side of the body and the right side of the brain controls the left. Changing the hand used for writing causes great confusion in the brain and can have a lot of knock-on effects.

Here are some articles we have written on this subject:

The effect of changing left to right handed
We had a massive response to that article and did an update including the best of the comments
Update on changing left-handers to right
Brain organisation and major functions on each side

These are some of the effects people have reported to us from being forced to change their writing hand as a child:

Bad handwriting
Bed-wetting
Stuttering
Nail biting
Shyness and being withdrawn
Defiance and provocative behaviour
Poor concentration
Bad memory
Reading difficulties
Problems with spelling
Neurotic personality
Physical tiredness

These problems will not definitely occur in all people who have their writing hand changed and of course they can arise due to many other causes, but there does seem to be an association between all of these issues and a forced change of writing hand. Our correspondents have also mentioned being bullied at school as a result of these effects.

Forcing a left-hander to change and use their right hand for writing is a very bad thing to do – please don’t do it!

We received an email recently with a personal story that really shows the serious impact this can have on people and made us think about this again. It is included in its entirety below:

From: Tonya
Subject: My mom forced me to write right-handed

I was looking up this subject because I’ve been trying to teach my right-handed son to tie his shoes, and since I tie my shoes left-handed I’m not much help to him. I also eat with my left, and when I was in gymnastics my left side was my dominant side. Yet I write right-handed, and can recall my mother snatching pencils out of my left hand and saying, “No! We write with our RIGHT–see? That rhymes. Use your right hand!” I remember it feeling weird, but I did as I was told. I had a bed-wetting phase but always thought it was due to other things, such as being angry with my parents for other matters but in our household children were not permitted to express anger. I’ve suffered anxiety and bouts of clinical depression my whole life–and PPD after the birth of my 1st baby–and until reading articles about it today never thought it could all go back to being left-converted. Wow. As an adult, I do get mentally tired easily, and fatigued sometimes for seemingly no reason. As a child I did not stutter, but as an adult I find speaking very difficult–I can write well and easily express what I want to say in writing….but I search for words when speaking and get all tongue-tied. I’m very introverted and soooo socially awkward. Oh and I flunked out of typing class in high school! Hahaha. Never could play the piano, either. So, after reading some articles, I can see a connection, for myself, between the studied effects and my own conversion to writing right-handed. Definitely.

For more information on this and all aspects of being left handed as a child and how to help left-handed children get past some of the basic challenges they will face with writing, cutting and other activities at school, download Lauren’s book “Your Left-Handed Child”.Also covers:* Development of left-handedness
* Pre-school development
* Strategies for everyday life
* Left-handedness in school
* Sport
* Music
* Practical and educational resources

Download Lauren’s book “Your Left-Handed Child”

Please add any of your own experiences or links to related material as comments below.

We would also be very interested in your comments on changes in the other direction – natural right-handers being forced to write left-handed as a result of physical problems such as an accident or stroke that means the cannot use their right hand (assuming nobody would have the audacity to change a right-hander to write left-handed just because of prejudice, religious views or some sense of what they should do to be “normal”!).

- See more at: http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/children/changing-left-to-right.html#sthash.Ez3hnPMU.dpuf

Small left-handed leather wallet??

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:33:11 -0500

I’m a lefty and wasn’t aware a wallet could be left or right handed…hmmm.

Chances of having a left-handed child

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:59:04 -0400

Two right handed parents, 9%
Left handed father, 12%
Left handed mother, 16%
Two left handed parents, 20%

Photo

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:59:36 -0400

Sinister and Rich The evidence that lefties earn more.

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:59:10 -0400

It’s well-known that many societies hold lefties in low esteem. In Christian tradition, the devil is generally associated with the left hand; the word sinister comes from the Latin for left, sinistra. Arabs have historically used the right hand for eating and the left for, er, activities at the other end of the alimentary process. More scientifically, left-handedness is related to a number of physiological conditions. Lefties have higher rates of high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and schizophrenia.

On the other hand, if you’ll forgive the inevitable bad pun, left-handedness is also linked with creativity. Leonardo da Vinci was a lefty, as were Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. Psychologists confirm that left-handedness involves different brain function: While right-handed people seem to have better cognitive skills on average, studies find that lefties are more common among the highly talented.

There are two reasons to expect lefties to earn less, not more. About 11 percent of the American population is left-handed (with slightly more men than women). Learning and working in a world of machines designed for majority righties, lefties are at a disadvantage. Tools like the screwdriver work well for both. But others, like the scissors and the standard classroom writing desk and the electric food slicer and the band saw—not to mention writing from left to right, with all the smudges and blackened fingers that entails—are explicitly designed for righties. This ought to make lefties less productive. (Hence the basis for Ned Flanders’ Leftorium, the fictional store for left-handed people onThe Simpsons.) In addition, given the studies showing that lefties are more prone to certain illnesses, they would be expected to spend less time in productive activity and, therefore, to earn less.What’s the economic effect of left- and right-handedness—who makes more money, lefties or normal people? Thanks to two new studies, one from the United States and another from the United Kingdom, we have some answers. At least as far as earnings are concerned, lefties have been unjustly slurred—if they’re men.

But that’s not the case. In the new U.S. study, authors Christopher S. Ruebeck of Lafayette College and Joseph E. Harrington and Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University looked at a representative sample of 5,000 men and women in the United States. Across the board, they found no discernible difference between the average hourly earnings, and other characteristics, of left- and right-handed people. Both groups earned an average of $13.20 per hour in 1993. They also had identical average intelligence scores. The British study, by Kevin Denny of University College Dublin and Vincent O’Sullivan of the University of Warwick, looked at about 5,000 people born in 1958 and found modest earnings differences: 5 percent higher pay for male lefties relative to their right-handed counterparts and 5 percent lower pay for female lefties compared to female righties.

What’s more noteworthy is that the pay difference appears to increase with college education. In the U.S. study, college graduates overall earned an average of 30 percent more than high-school graduates. And after accounting for other determinants of pay—age, intelligence, marital status, and race and ethnicity—lefties with college education earned 10 to 15 percent more than their right-handed counterparts. (The U.K. study did not look at the effect of college education on the earning power of lefties and righties.)

The identification of two styles of thinking may help explain why college-educated lefties make more. Psychologist Stanley Coren defines “convergent” thinking as “a fairly focused application of existing knowledge and rules to the task of isolating a single correct answer.” “Divergent” thinking, by contrast, “moves outward from conventional knowledge into unexplored association.” There may be an outsize number of lefty geniuses because lefties are more likely to engage in divergent thinking. In an experiment in which subjects devised uses for pairs of common objects, such as imagining that a stick and a can could together be a birdhouse, lefties on average came up with nearly 30 percent more uses.

But the tendency toward greater aptitude in divergent thinking holds only for male lefties. Psychologists don’t know why this is the case. One hypothesis concerns differing levels of fetal testosterone. This is just a possibility: Psychologists agree that the relationship between left- and right-handedness and brain function is still not well-understood. Whatever its cause, though, the male lefty advantage may have an economic effect: The boost in earnings found in the U.S. study was associated with left-handedness only for men. The study found no systematic difference between the pay of women lefties and women righties, regardless of education or other factors.

These results suggest that education and an edge in divergent thinking are a potent mix that put college-educated male lefties on top in the earnings game. Any practical consequences? If your family’s college fund runs short, you might send your lefty sons to college and the rest of the brood to trade school. And if you’re at a college mixer or alumni reunion looking for a mate with high earning potential, you might keep an eye out for the guy who wears his watch on his right wrist.

Photo

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 12:00:28 -0400

Do left-handers make better drivers?

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 22:48:00 -0400

Left-handers have a big advantage over their right-handed peers when it comes to learning to drive, research suggests.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/262406-do-left-handers-make-better-drivers#ixzz25w9YpCQP

Did you know?

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 21:54:46 -0400

If you grab a coffee mug with your left hand, the picture will be facing away from you. (Righties get to look at the picture while they drink.)

Bike gears are on the right side of the bike. This means that if you carry the bike on your right shoulder, the gears face outward. If you put the bike on your left shoulder, you’ll get grease stains all over your clothes.

Lefties have to get their own “left-handed” boomerangs, golf clubs, hockey sticks, and baseball mitts. This means we usually can’t borrow our friends’ equipment.

High-end headphones (with only one cord) have the cord on the left side. The cord gets in the way more for left-handed writers.

Camera shutter buttons are often on the right. Pressing the button with our less-dextrous hand makes it harder for lefties to hold the camera steady while taking a picture.

Left Handers Day is coming - August 13th 2012

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:31:37 -0400

psychofactz: More Facts on Psychofacts :)

Sun, 20 May 2012 10:23:10 -0400

psychofactz:

More Facts on Psychofacts :)

Photo

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:36:50 -0400

Studies show that the left side of your face is more attractive than the right.

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:34:01 -0400

Next time you’re posing for a photo, keep this in mind…Showing the left side of your face can make you look more attractive. In a new study, people rated photos of the left side of the face as more attractive than the right side.
Why the weird preference? It could be that the left side communicates more emotion, because it’s controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, which is considered more emotional than the left side of the brain. Everyone jokes about having a “good” side, but now there’s a science to it!

Face Symmetry and Beauty: How Important is It, Really? »

youbeauty.com

did-you-kno: Source: Coren, Stanley.The Left-Hander Syndrome

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:07:31 -0400

did-you-kno:

Source: Coren, Stanley.The Left-Hander Syndrome

For the teachers out there...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:15:19 -0400

Over many years we have been encouraging teacher training
organisations to give more consideration to the requirement
of left-handed children and providing information to help
raise teachers’ awareness of the issues. There are a few
simple things teachers can do in the classroom to make a
dramatic difference to left-handers in their early years
at school and avoid problems as they develop through the
education system.

These are basic things such as:

* Sitting a left-handed child on the left side of writing
areas so they do not bump elbows with the child next to them

* Demonstrating a correct writing grip and encouraging an
effective writing position

* Having left-handed scissors and knowing how to use them.

* Understanding that left-handers will form some letters in
a different direction to right-handers.

Manicure set 6 piece left handed in leather case £29.95 / $47.38

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 13:00:06 -0400

Manicure set 6 piece left handed in leather case £29.95 / $47.38:

The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed Lefties Face Chance Of ADHD, Other Disorders; Brain Wiring Holds Clues

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:00:05 -0500

Left-handers have been the subject of curiosity, stigma and even fear over the centuries. Researchers now, however, are recognizing the scientific importance of understanding why people use one hand or the other to write, eat or toss a ball.

Modern lefty lore says left-handers are smarter, more creative and have an advantage over righties. But is it true? WSJ’s Christina Tsuei looks into the science of lefties.

Handedness, as the dominance of one hand over the other is called, provides a window into the way our brains are wired, experts say. And it may help shed light on disorders related to brain development, like dyslexia, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which are more common in left-handed people.

Other recent research suggests that mixed-handedness—using different hands for daily tasks and not having a dominant one—may be even more strongly linked than left-handedness to ADHD and possibly other conditions.

About 10% of people are left-handed, according to expert estimates. Another 1% of the population is mixed-handed. What causes people not to favor their right hand is only partly due to genetics—even identical twins, who have 100% of the same genes, don’t always share handedness.

More important, researchers say, are environmental factors—especially stress—in the womb. Babies born to older mothers or at a lower birth weight are more likely to be lefties, for example. And mothers who were exposed to unusually high levels of stress during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to a left-handed child. A review of research, published in 2009 in the journal Neuropsychologia, estimated that about 25% of the variability in handedness is due to genetics.

• Left-handed people make up about 10% of the population, while 1% of the population appear not to be dominant with either hand, known as mixed-handed.

•Being left-handed is only partially genetic.

For reasons not clearly understood, handedness depends mainly on how a baby’s brain develops while in the womb.

• On average there is no difference in intelligence between right-and left-handed people. But lefties do better on an element of creativity known as divergent thinking.

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President Obama

•Six of the last 12 U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush, have been lefties.

• Left-handed people earn on average 10% lower salaries than righties, according to a recent study. Findings of some earlier studies on income have been mixed.

•Despite popular misperceptions, lefties aren’t more accident prone than right-handed people and don’t tend to die at a younger age.

•Left-handedness has been linked to increased risk of certain neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia and ADHD. Mixed-handedness is even more strongly associated with ADHD.

•Most people’s brains have a dominant side. More symmetrical brains of mixed-handed people may explain the link to some neural disorders.

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President Bush

On average there is no significant difference in IQ between righties and lefties, studies show, belying popular perceptions. There is some evidence that lefties are better at divergent thinking, or starting from existing knowledge to develop new concepts, which is considered an element of creativity. And left-handed people have salaries that on average are about 10% lower than righties, according to recent research performed at Harvard University that analyzed large income data bases, although findings of some earlier studies were mixed.

Left-handedness appears to be associated with a greater risk for a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. While lefties make up about 10% of the overall population, about 20% of people with schizophrenia are lefties, for example. Links between left-handedness and dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders have also been reported in research studies.

The reasons for this aren’t clear. Scientists speculate it could be related to a concept known as brain lateralization. The brain has two halves. Each performs primarily separate, specialized functions, such as language processing, which mainly takes place in the left hemisphere. There is lots of communication between the hemispheres.

Typically in right-handers, the brain’s left side is dominant. But this tendency doesn’t hold up with lefties, as scientists previously believed. Some 70% of lefties rely on the left hemisphere for their language centers, a key brain function, says Metten Somers, a psychiatrist and researcher who studies brain lateralization at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. This doesn’t appear to present problems, scientists say.

The other 30% of lefties appear to exhibit either a right-dominant or distributed pattern, Dr. Somers says. They may be more prone to impaired learning or functioning, and at greater risk for brain disorders, he says.

Hemisphere dominance is typical and more efficient. Symmetry, in which neither side is dominant, is believed linked to disorders, researchers say. People with schizophrenia, for instance, exhibit more symmetrical activation of their brain hemispheres than those without the disorder, studies show.

In a 2008 study, Alina Rodriguez, a psychology professor at Mid Sweden University in Östersund who studies handedness, brain development and ADHD, found that left- or mixed-handedness in children was linked to a greater risk of difficulty with language as well as ADHD symptoms. In another study published last year in Pediatrics, involving nearly 8,000 Finnish children, Dr. Rodriguez found that mixed-handedness rather than left-handedness was linked to ADHD symptoms.

And knowing that a child was mixed-handed and had ADHD symptoms at age 8 helped predict much more accurately than just knowing they had symptoms at that age whether the child would continue to have symptoms at age 16. (What happens when people are forced to switch from writing with their dominant hand to the other isn’t well known, experts say.)

Research that suggests that there is a link between favoring the left hand and an increased risk of bipolar disorder and ADHD, among other conditions. Emily Nelson has details on Lunch Break.

One reason that not more is known about lefties is that many studies of how the brain works prohibit left-handers from participating because their brain wiring is known to be different, says Robin Nusslock, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who uses neuroimaging to study mood disorders.

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Lefties have an advantage in sports such as tennis, fencing and baseball, when up against a righthanded competitor, but not in noninteractive sports such as gymnastics.

A potential pathway between prenatal stress and brain wiring could be cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, which can interfere with brain development, says Carsten Obel, a professor at the public-health department at Aarhus University in Denmark who has conducted research on the prenatal environment and risk of disease. Cortisol is able to pass over the placenta barrier to influence the baby.

Several studies show that stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or job loss, during pregnancy increase the risk of having non-right-handed children. In one study of 834 Danish mothers and their 3-year-old children, Dr. Obel and his colleagues found that mothers who reported multiple stressful events during their third trimester of pregnancy and experienced distress were more than three times as likely to have a mixed-handed child, 17% compared with 5%, according to the 2003 paper published in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.

Another large study followed 1,700 Swedish mothers and children until the kids were 5 years old. It found that mothers with depressive symptoms or who underwent stressful life events while pregnant were more likely to have left- or mixed-handed children. The work was published by Dr. Rodriguez and her colleagues in 2008 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Experts suggest that left- and mixed-handedness could be used as a risk factor for possible psychiatric or developmental conditions, along with behavioral difficulties, such as having a hard time in school. The presence of such risk factors could prompt early evaluation for those conditions, they say.

—Christina Tsuei contributed to this article.

A version of this article appeared Dec. 6, 2011, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Health Risks Of Being Left-Handed.

Lefties vs. Righties: How we decide differently

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:00:05 -0500

We like to think that we make decisions based on our ideas of right and wrong — and we do, to an extent. But according to recent research, our choices may also be influenced by something as simple as whether we’re right or left handed.

That’s because right-handed people are more drawn to things on the right side of a screen or page, while left-handed people look to the left. Cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research says it’s part of the “body-specificity hypothesis” — the idea thatour physical bodies affect the decisions we make and the way we communicate with one another. One of the easiest ways to measure this hypothesis is by looking at whether a person is a righty or a lefty.

[Related: 7 ways to tell what someone is thinking just by looking at their eyes]

“Handedness is a good tool (to use) because it’s easily measurable, and our hands our important in how we interact with the physical world,” Casasanto explained to MSNBC.

In his study, which was published in a recent edition Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Casasanto found that people tend to prefer the things that they see or experience on the same side as their dominant hand.

“People like things better when they are easier to perceive and interact with,” he says. Right-handers interact with their environment more easily on the right than on the left, so they come to associate “good” with “right” and “bad” with “left,” he explained.

“Since about 90 percent of the population is right-handed, people who want to attract customers, sell products, or get votes should consider that the right side of a page or a computer screen might be the ‘right’ place to be,” he added.

We even tend to use our dominant side to differentiate positive ideas from negative ones. In 2004, presidential candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush — both of whom are right-handed — gestured more often with their right hands when expressing positive thoughts or ideas. In 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain were left-handed, and both candidates used their left hands more often when expressing something positive.

The association with positivity extends to the choices everyday people make as well. When Casasanto asked study participants to decide between two products to buy, two job applicants to hire, or two alien creatures to trust, right-handed participants regularly chose the ones on the right side of the page, while south-paws chose the ones on the left.

That influence seems to extend beyond the physical world, influencing even abstract ideas like intelligence and honesty. Which means that it affects the way we understand one another as well, Casasanto says

“Most of the time, we feel like we understand each other because what a word means to me, is close enough to what it means to you,” he says. “But it’s never the same, and what a word means in your mind may depend on quirks of your body.”

While the preference seems to hold true even for kids as young as 5 years old, it isn’t absolute. People who are right-hand dominant but lose the use of that hand, even temporarily, start to associate “good” with “left” instead of “right.”

“After a few minutes of fumbling with their right hand, righties start to think like lefties,” Casasanto said in a statement. “If you change people’s bodies, you change their minds.”

Left handed cartoon characters

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:32:00 -0500

While most cartoon characters are either right-handed or change hands to fit whatever makes the best pose for a particular frame, we have noticed that there seem to be quite a few cartoon characters that are clearly and consistently left-handed. Examples include:

Bart Simpson, Ned Flanders and Mr Burns from The Simpsons (and, occasionally, Marge)
(The show’s creator, Matt Groening, is himself left-handed)
Chuckie from Rugrats
Link – the sword-wielding hero from The Legend of Zelda
Chris Griffin from Family Guy
Doug Funnie from Doug
Arnold from Hey Arnold!and if we include puppets as well:
Kermit the Frog from The Muppets
(a creation of the late Jim Henson, also left-handed)
Bear in the Big Blue House

We are sure you know many more examples and if you do please add them as a comment to this article below and if you can put a link to a page where there is a picture of them being left-handed that would be great and we will build up our list.

What is it that makes the artist or animator draw a left-handed character? We would be very interested in your thoughts:

Is it because the artist is left-handed?

Are there more left handed cartoon artists than you would expect from the 10% or so of left-handers in the population?

Is there anything special about animation that makes a left handed character easier to draw than the right handed ones?

Is it because when a cartoonist is drawing them he draws their writing hand on the same side as his writing hand (his right, their left)?

Are there deliberate reasons for making some characters left-handed – to seem a bit “quirky” or rebellious (Bart?)

Left handed puppets are interesting. The Big Blue Bear is left-handed on the show; he seems to do most things with his left hand. This is because the head controls are important and a right-handed puppeer’s right hand is busy moving the head and mouth and has to do other things with their left hand. In a similar fashion, a lot of Muppets are left-handed, because their puppeteers are right-handed, so the right hand is almost always used to operate the puppet’s head.

What about left-handed puppeteer’s – is it really hard to do as the puppets are designed for right-handed use?

We would also be interested in inks to cartoons about being left-handed. Here is one page we found (though not particularly funny!)
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/l/left_handed.asp
Here are a few more – I am sure we can find funnier cartoons than these?
http://www.shereebradfordlea.com/coollinks.html

Photo

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:27:34 -0500