righty turning lefty

[bobbycat73]

Re: righty turning lefty

Rafael Nadal is right handed.

[zhul4nder]

anyone have any ideas on HOW to learn to be left handed or ambidextrous?


for starters: practice?

well, because I am an idiot, i decided to do a test with my left hand

it wasn't too bad considering that it was a mutliple choice test :S

[tsugomaru]

Re: righty turning lefty

I suppose you're right about the ambidextrous thing Devonin, I like your definition better. However, I still can't help but feel that I'm closer to being your ambidextrous definition than your omnidextrous definition. I can do things almost equally well with both hands, but that's because I grow a preference to which hand I want to use after a while. Maybe it comes with repeated practice with my left or right.

By the way, you can always learn to do anything with your other hand. It's just part of the way you adapt. If you loose your dominant hand, what then? You're not screwed for life, it's always possible to learn to do things with your other hand.

I'm surprised not a single person has yet to mention, "this is not a critical thinking topic." It really should be moved.

~Tsugomaru

[devonin]

Re: righty turning lefty

I'm surprised not a single person has yet to mention, "this is not a critical thinking topic." It really should be moved.

I agree, but when I saw the thread, GuidoHunter had already posted in it. To me, a mod seeing and reading the thread and then responding to it implies that they've decided it is in the right place, so I didn't say anything.

[dore]

Re: righty turning lefty

I'm surprised not a single person has yet to mention, "this is not a critical thinking topic." It really should be moved.

It's nice for people to be talking about a more serious topic (not necessarily CT worthy but still serious) without having to wade through spam and horrible grammar.

It's really all about comfort. It's pretty easy to do something with your non-dominant hand just as long as you practice something enough to be comfortable. For me, I do pretty much everything with my right hand, but when it comes to stances I generally use the left-handed stance (For example, I shoot a basketball with my right hand, but step into the shot with my right foot usually; I prefer to spin to my right than my left (a generally left-handed trait); I skateboard/snowboard with my right foot in front; and for swimming starts I start with both feet on the edge of the block, giving no precedence to either foot.)

[boondocks77]

Re: righty turning lefty

My music teacher was in an accident, and her right hand was that which she wrote with. Unfortunately, she lost the ability to play piano extremely well, since you do need 2hands. But she managed to learn how to write with her left hand, which has now become her dominant.

[esupin]

Re: righty turning lefty

Well...really the only benefit would be the ability to take notes extremely efficiently...as the binding would not get in the way if you were able to switch off hands.

QFT.

Also, it's easier to switch when you're younger because your brain is still growing at that time. In many cases, little kids can have sections of brain taken out and still compensate by growing new connections, while adults can't.

[TSB_[Jbomb888]]

Re: righty turning lefty

Being ambidextrous would be very cool.
Wasn't there a person who wrote english with their right hand, and latin with the left at the same time?

[tsugomaru]

Re: righty turning lefty

Once again, heading in the chit-chat direction.

From my personal experience, it's very difficult for me to write two different things at the same time. If I knew how to write in two different languages, I could give you a little more information about it, but I don't know how to write in two different languages.

I believe with practice, anything can be possible. A single-handed person can eventually learn to write with both hands and with more practice, can learn to write two different things. However, I could care less about using my time to learn such a skill because it would be useless to me. I take few notes and if I do, I can write fast enough to copy it all down.

~Tsugomaru

[madmatt621]

Re: righty turning lefty

A friend of mine was a righty, then broke her arm in the first grade and learned to write with her left.

She's now a lefty.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

A similar thing happened to me. My right arm was in a splint so I had to write with my left hand.

Now I do a lot of things left and right handed. Golf, pool, baseball, football, etc..

[Flyleef]

Re: righty turning lefty

I tried. It didn't work out.

[R0nburgundy]

Re: righty turning lefty

I'm right handed and I play guitar hero left handed.

[masamursha]

Re: righty turning lefty

I would say that overall, I am left handed, but i definitely have lateral dominance.
For example:
Left hand dominance: writing, throwing, kicking, overall strength,
Right hand dominance: swinging (baseball bat, golf club), snapping, eye preference, skateboard regular, eating, cutting scizzors

The one thing that confuses me is that I eat with my right, but write with my left. I never really understood why and found it odd. =/

[jpcduran]

Re: righty turning lefty

Yes it is I've done it. How? you ask. I had a boxers fracture so I was forced to write with my left. Now I can do both.

[Cavernio]

Re: righty turning lefty

Aside: You know, just because something might actually have a yes/no answer, doesn't mean that it's something which we KNOW the answer to. Topics like that should totally be allowed in CT. (Like this topic.)

Anyways....
There's actually been a ton of research done in regards to handedness in psychology, (well, laterality specifically), so much that there's actually an entire journal devoted to it called Laterality. Left-handed or right-handedness doesn't just stop at your hands, and in fact the brain is actually wired differently depending on who you are. Interestingly, this phenomenon hasn't just been seen in humans; animals seem to possess it as well, as also in about the same ratio of 1/10 left-handed/right-handed as people do. It's even be found in fossil records where we see that trilobytes (ok, not sure if when I learned this in class if it was trilobytes or some other insects, but what the prof drew on the board looked liked a trilobyte) were found more often to have been biten or hurt on one side, indicating that they likely more often turned one direction over another.

As far as brain wiring goes, I forget/never knew specifics about what changes from where to where, but I know someone who's published a few papers which have involved differences in auditory processing and attention, where some people have ear advantages for processing language vs. pitch vs. meaning, which may be switched around depending on whether you're right or left handed.
I also, however, am pretty sure that if you purposely choose to change your dominant hand, your brain's not going to re-wire itself, (unless, perhaps, if you're really young, in which case 'choosing' may not be something you can even do), and that's it completely possible to change what hand you use if you really wanted to.

If you can't tell, I'm a strong proponent that showing a hand preference is something genetic. This by no means means that I think that people can't learn to use other hands to do things, or that people're strictly right-handed/left-handed. There's definitely a continuum of sorts for right/left handedness, and when studying anything involving laterality, handedness questionnaires involve a slew of questions beyond simply "what hand do you prefer to write with".

About being able to learn to write with your non-dominant hand as well as your dominant one later in life, I don't think it's quite as necessary as language to learn at a certain age. Writing is a fine motor skill, and we can learn new fine motor skills more than adequately at older ages. (take FFR for example.) However, there's still evidence that the people who perform at the top of any given fine motor ability start at pretty young ages; like, say, most professional musicians.
I'm assuming you're not planning on entering any hand-writing competitions, so I think you'll be able to learn to write with your other hand just fine, given enough patience and practice.