Ambidextrous disadvantages

[paigetheoracle]

New research in the UK (Sorry, no reference - short clipping out of a newspaper) has found that the ambidextrous have problems with language and learning as well as attention deficit order in more prevalence than their right handed peers.

 

Is this because moving between handedness causes indecision or is it something else as left handed people are also disadvantaged, when compared to right handed people?

[CraigD]

New research in the UK (Sorry, no reference - short clipping out of a newspaper) has found that the ambidextrous have problems with language and learning as well as attention deficit order in more prevalence than their right handed peers.

 

Is this because moving between handedness causes indecision or is it something else as left handed people are also disadvantaged, when compared to right handed people?

My guess is that the many subtle and sometimes-profound differences between right-handed and non-right-handed people are due to both neuroanatomical and social factors.

 

Lefties (the ambidextrous fall more into this category, I think, than “righies”) are, by definition, neuro-atypical – that is to say, their brains are not “wired” in the usual way. Most right handed people have less symmetric brains, the left hemisphere larger than the right, while lefties tend to have shrunken left hemispheres, so the two hemisphere’s are more nearly the same size. As a result, brain function is arranged differently – obviously with respect to preferred hand, but in less obvious ways also.

 

Left-handedness is hypothesized to be due to unusually high prenatal testosterone levels, which is hypothesized to have many profound effects on neurological development, so in a sense, left-handedness may be in a sense more an indicator than a cause of neurological aberrations.

 

(The wikipedia article “handedness” has more information and links to more information)

 

Socially, lefties experience almost constant stress that righties don’t, from things as simple as operating machines designed to righties, to teasing and persecution – though at present in most politically advanced societies, not as much as was typical in the past, when being “sinister” rather than “dexterous” was commonly ascribed supernatural meaning, and being left-handed a sign of evil.

 

The ADD Paige mentions is, I suspect, more a neurological than a social effect, though it’s hard even in something as specific as this to cleanly separate the two.