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Handedness: What's Yours?

What is Your Handedness?

  • Left Handed, Sinister, Southpaw.

    Votes: 12 24.0%
  • Right Handed, Dexter, Northpaw.

    Votes: 21 42.0%
  • Semi Ambidexterous, Bi-Dexterous, Cross Dominant

    Votes: 17 34.0%
  • Fully Ambidexterous.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    50

NilesCalder

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 20, 2001
Messages
1,805
What is your handedness?
Are you a Southpaw or a North?
Do you have some kinda funky inbetween?

What are your thought on handedness?

Niles "Suppressed Sinister, with learned ambidexterity" Calder
 
For writing, purely right-handed - I can't even hold a pen correctly in my left hand. I type both-handed but that's a learned skill.

My only semi-dexterious oddity is that I wear a watch on my right wrist. No idea why, it just seems more natural to me.

If I need to get the creative juices flowing, I need a generator!

Jane.
 
I write left-handed. Use a knife and fork right-handed, but a spoon left-handed. Play the guitar (well, hold a guitar) left-handed. Bat right-handed but bowl left-handed.

I'm just odd I guess.
 
Well, for anything that requires dexterity or any kind of control at all, actually, I use my left hand, for strength or stamina I use my right. Stop giggling at the back.
 
Inverurie Jones said:
Well, for anything that requires dexterity or any kind of control at all, actually, I use my left hand, for strength or stamina I use my right. Stop giggling at the back.


What if you need stamina and control???

<runs from the room screaming>
 
south paw here... but I use scissors right handed and I am right footed!

8¬)
 
Long post on this fascinating subject...

I'm a lefty, as is my ex-husband, father of our four right-handed children. Hmmm.

Most lefties have to use scissors right-handed as that's how scissors are made. Same goes for most gadgets.

Thus, I had great trouble operating an expensive and supposedly foolproof tin opener. My son said, 'It's because you're left-handed....' and all became clear: I was working it backwards.

I read a fascinating pop psychology book some years back which demonstrated brain 'handedness' beautifully with a simple experiment.

(Basically, the brain is divided into left and right hemispheres, each of which has distinct characteristics. A person's 'handedness' is diametrically linked to the dominance of one hemisphere. With me so far? Good. So a left-handed person's RIGHT hemisphere is dominant, which is supposed to manifest itself in different thinking patterns from those of a righty.)

What you do is ask someone a simple question which has to be one of two types AND requires a moment's thought.

Type a- a factual question relating to the person's daily routine, e.g. 'where did you hang your coat last night?'

Type b- a subjective question, such as 'what is your second favourite colour?'

During the few seconds the person reflects on their answer, their eyes will drift toward the side of the brain which deals with that type of activity.
(So if I remember rightly, the reply to the coat question will be sought from the 'concrete thinking' LEFT side, and the second favourite colour will be found on the 'abstract thinking' RIGHT side. )
You can see them literally 'looking' for the answer!

I worked with young children when I read this book and it worked perfectly on them, over and over again.
 
I am mainly right-handed - but I can only throw with my left, and can sew with either hand, depending on which is easiest. My father was strongly left-handed, but at his first school he was expected to learn to use his right hand for writing - so he taught himself to be ambidextrous in everything and he thought everyone should do this if possible.* One of my granddaughters is stongly left-handed - so there could be a genetic factor.

Do left-handed people feel disadvantaged in any way?

Heather.

*On memorable occasions he and I would play right-handed darts - the room would empty rapidly and the winner was the one who actually hit the board, never mind scoring! :)
 
I'm a very dull completely right handed person, even though I've injured my right shoulder, I can't use my left hand for anything usefull.
Hubcap on the other hand is a leftie, but plays guitar, eats and uses a mouse right handed. He doesn't use scissors or tin openers with either hand, as he would almost certainly have his or someone elses arm off. Neither can he spread anything on a slice of toast, or indeed eat toast without it being cut up by me. So I don't know about left handed people being disadvantaged, but their wives certainly can be. :rolleyes:
 
I actually found that I was more proficient with my left hand than I had previously realised when I broke my right collarbone a couple of years back.
I was able to do most things perfectly adequately with my left hand which I previously was used to doing with my right ( :rolleyes: yeah yeah, get it off your chest :p )
 
Adrian Veidt said:
I was able to do most things perfectly adequately with my left hand which I previously was used to doing with my right ( :rolleyes: yeah yeah, get it off your chest :p )
It was on your chest!? Blimey. Photos please. :D
 
As I mentioned on the other handedness thread, I write left-handed but do most other things with my right hand. I tried to learn to write right-handed when I was 15 and had a broken left arm, but I just couldn't do it.

I don't think being left-handed is a disadvantage anymore. The ballpoint pen liberated us. (no worries about smearing the ink.)

Why are very old languages, such as Hebrew, written from right to left? Were more people left-handed in the past?

And why did the most sensible way to write, boustrophedon (back and forth), die out?
 
I'm right handed - though I pick my nose/scratch my arse with my left (in that order).
 
I'm right handed, but left eyed.

Anything I do with one eye, such as using my camera, I use my left eye. When I first got a camera my dad got really annoyed that I was using my left eye not my right, but no matter how I tried I couldn't close just my left eye. I can do it now but it took practice and its not as natural as closing just my right eye. ;)
 
ditto Mike P - but I still can't do it - so any tips, please-

Heather.
 
Inherited the quirk

I'm semi ambi, and both hands and feet. My mother is also semi ambi and so is my daughter. 3 sisters, 2 of which are ambi. All the males in the family, Dad, brother and ex-hubby are all lefties. Never knew my granddad(s) but Mom says both were lefties. Is left-handedness more common in one sex or the other? And might that have to do with the ambi trait seen in the women in our family?
 
I think i'm a repressed leftie, i write with my right but i can write eith my left just more slowly, if i practised i think icould be done. I think perhaps wheni was taught to write i was told to use my right hand. My handwriting (right) is pretty bad even the people in my dads class write better that i do and they are six and seven. Another wierd thing is that the fingrs on my left hand are fatter thatn the finger on my right hand. if i ever put one of rings on my left hand it gets invarialby gets stuck. Surely if i ws right handed my right hand would be larger??
 
I'm very right handed, although I could write (untidily) with my left hand if I had to. I used to practise writing with my left hand when I was small, and got quite good at it, but I suppose I'm out of practise now. Don't ask... I was a strange child! :eek:
I have small hands and fingers, but the ones on my right hand are very slightly bigger (I can tell by ring sizes). Is that true of the dominant hand then, that the fingers are generally bigger?
 
Spooky angel said:
Is that true of the dominant hand then, that the fingers are generally bigger?

It seems to be so with me.

I'm left handed & left footed & both left hand & foot are a fraction bigger than the right hand & foot.

I think also that left handers tend to choose what side is more convenient for them, I use a computer mouse & a calculator in my right hand, it frees my left hand for the keyboard &/or writing & use a knife & fork in the "correct" hands, it's more convenient.

That's of course if them gimpy awkward right handed b****r's leave us alone, I still get the odd silly sod, who will remind me that I'm wearing my watch on the wrong wrist. When I was a kid, I even had a few adults, who thought it was their right to try to remove my watch & swap it over to the other arm. Explaining as they did so that the left hand received less movement & shock!!!!
 
im slightly ambi..

when i was little i used to get confused and forget which hand i used for writting, untill i finally settled on my right hand..I can write with my left but i take longer and its a bit messy, though im sure if i practised i could write with either hand :D
 
Ambi to a big degree - equally strong in either arm, write with right predominantly, but can write with left: however, if thrown a ball will catch with whichever hand is closest. Voted as semi-ambi but perhaps should have said fully:confused:

Wife is right handed, kids: one right handed, one left handed.

Left eye dominant with me - but eyes of unequal strength, so perhaps that's not a fair test.
 
I write with my left but do pretty much everything else with my right.

Both my mother and sister are leftie's and interestingly all three of us have a certain amount of artistic talent, mainly painting and music. My father and brother are both right handed mechanical engineers who would often despair at my total inability to strip down and rebuild an engine.
 
Left handed, although I have to use scissors right handed (badly) because of their design. This was a real pest as I thought it was me who was useless at school, but now I've decided that the school was at fault for failing to provide 33% of its students with the correct equipment.
 
I buy left handed scissors for the kids in my class. I can't believe ppl were actually forced to use right handed ones...I can imagine how awkward it must be because I've tried using the left handed ones when I picked them up by accident once!
 
Spooky angel said:
I can't believe ppl were actually forced to use right handed ones...
Where left handed scissors around in the mid 70s?

I just couldn't win with the right handed ones. If I used my left hand the paper just folded, if I used my right, my lack of motor control sent straight lines all over the place.
I'm ambidextrous when it comes to mouse control. At work I use my right hand, but at home my left. Never alter the windows default to left hand control clicks though. Does this show me using a different part of my brain?
 
naitaka said:
And why did the most sensible way to write, boustrophedon (back and forth), die out?

What's boustrophedon? I've never heard of this before.
 
Scissors

One can get pairs of scissors that are both right and left handed, and they have them at my Dad's school, of coursei have 'somehow' got hold of a pair and they are very useful.If anyones really intersted and wants a pair or some for their school they are made by Rahmqvist, http://www.rahmqvist.com
 
Maybe you're right and they weren't around in the 70s. I can't say I remember because I'm right handed! lol
 
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