At one time I was involved in the study of human motor behavior and sport psychology. This was about 10 years ago, but here’s what I was taught back then. *
Ambidexterity is a misnomer, and the condition is actually a developmental disorder called “incomplete dominance”. A common example:
Three kids are standing at a bus stop - one is right handed, one is a leftie, and one is “ambidextrous”. Three other kids throw snowballs at them. The rightie raises his right arm and blocks the snowball. The leftie blocks with her left arm. The ambidextrous kid begins to raise his right arm, hesitates, begins to raise his left arm, and is hit in the face by the snowball.
Now, this is different from a person who HAS a dominant side, but develops the ability to use the other side for some tasks ALSO. This would not be considered “ambidexterity” - rather it would be termed “bilateral proficiency”.
I’ve seen real-world examples of both situations in teaching various sport and manipulative skills.
Remember that kids often don’t develop a dominant side until first or second grade. So up until that point they often experiment with tasks using both sides. However, it’s a warning flag for teachers if kids are still doing this at around second grade or older. As I recall, there were often perceptual processing difficulties associated with incomplete dominance.
Remember, this is old information, from memory. I’d be interested to hear some current stuff on this.
I am reasonably ambidextrous. I write with my left hand, though have written with my right in situations of necessity. I naturally eat using my left hand, but will use either hand for drinking. That said, some things i naturally do with my right. I use my right hand for mousing. I could use my left, but most workstations are set up for righties, and it’s not worth the bother of changing. Many activities are a mixture for me in “handedness”, could be right, left or either.
Still, I “identify” left based on writing and if someone asks “Are you left handed or right?” I naturally respond left.
So, that as a background, I took the test posted above. It told me I am 44.44% left handed. My response: :dubious: Odd that they don’t even ask about writing, don’t you think?
Accroding to the test, I’m 30% left handed, which I guess makes sense. I do everything right handed except shooting. I think the reason I started shooting lefty was because I can only wink with my right eye - my left eye just can’t close by itself. So, while aiming a .22, I just naturally did it lefty so I could look down the barrel with my left eye.
Photography taught me that I’m left eyed. Made using my Nikon FE a real pain in the eyes til I got the MD-11.
The test showed me as being 97% lefty. Which is odd, I think. I’m NOT left handed. I’m ambi, apparantly naturally so, since it manifested itself well before school. I wonder what hand I would’ve settled down to using for writing if I hadn’t been forced to the one…? Hokkaido mentioned the “write right” phrase and that really struck a memory for me.
I was bilaterally screwed up as a small child - fairly hideous motor skills on both sides. When I failed to show a preference/dominance my mother just went ahead and worked more on right handed development since she’s right handed so it was easier that way. I remained terribly clumsy on both sides (horrid handwriting, totally useless at hand-eye coordination tasks) until about puberty and since then I’ve been right dominant but can definitely use my left hand comfortably for most tasks, which I noticed about when puberty hit. I found myself using my left hand for a lot of stuff and didn’t have any problems with it. Comes in handy for switching off so I can do two things at once if I have to. Writing is still much tidier and faster right-handed but I figure it took me this long to get good at it with one hand, the left hand is bound to catch up eventually if I keep using it. I took a painting class using Chinese brush techniques this year and since it wasn’t a skill I’d learned with either hand, did it left handed and did just fine. But I’ll admit that I’ve been consciously attempting to bring the left hand up to speed ever since I noticed that it was coming into play for a lot of every day stuff, because being ambidextrous would be cool, if not useful.
An interesting fact is that being forced into using right hand at an early age, when you’re naturally left-handed, has been attributed to cause stuttering in a very high percentage of such cases.
Curious, did any one of you with such a case ever had a stuttering period also?
Very much a right hander here. … But … When flying, there seems to be no difference in ability with right or left hand on the stick which is determined by placement of the throttle, some planes with sticks have it on the right and some on the left. Hummmmmmmmmmm kinda strange now that I’m thunkin on it…
Do any of you who write with the left hand curve your left hand around so that your hand so above the letters you are forming? (A right-handed person could do this also.)
A left-handed friend in high school wrote this way and it was torture to watch him. I wondered if it was more common among left-handed people.
I think, perhaps, it is because sticks/yokes and throttles don’t require movements as precise as writing. Subtle, yes, gentle, yes, but it’s a different type of motion than writing or drawing. I have no problem switching off, either.
That said, I have talked to a couple pilots who claimed to have trouble making the switch, but they seemed to be guys who spent 20 or 30 years using just one particular set up, so it could be a matter of a very well set habit.
I’m a flight instructor, and I’ve thought about this a lot. I agree that the actual movement of stick and throttle don’t need to be that precise. Rather, the TIMING of moving those controls needs to be pretty good, and I believe that’s more of a perceptual skill than a physical one. And indeed, I’ve noticed not too many people have a big problem changing hands, which often is necessary when transitioning from a yoke to a stick airplane.
However, the change from left seat to right seat gives some people problems. I think that’s because the sight picture can be significantly different, particularly in wide-ish aircraft like Piper Warriors.
What about people like me, who had no apparent dominant hand in elementary school, recieved training to make me a leftie,***** (because the teachers were convinced my mother had “made” me be a righty to avoid the hassle a southpaw gets) and instead went through school writing right handed. I can write with both hands, the left just as legiblely now. I can do many things with either my right or left hand, though some things I prefer to do right handed. I took the time out later on, in High School on purpose to “train” my left hand to write as well as my right hand, even in reverse/mirror image. That test said I’m 44.44% left handed. For what it’s worth, my left eye is dominant.
***** [SUB]I think they gave up after a while, when I proved to be better at cutting and writing with my right hand than left, though I could color with my left, my writing was more legible at that time with my right hand. [/SUB]
That test is a load of bunk – it says I’m 57% lefty, but it ain’t so. I write righy, I throw righty, I eat righty, I turn the steering wheel righty, and so on.
I’m pretty well totally ambidexterous which is useful for:
drawing/painting
playing pool
I’m sure some other things, but none that I can think of right now.
I’m sort of equally good at most tasks with either hand. That being said, I’m also freekishly clumsy, and walk into things/hurt myself on a fairly regular basis.
Well, when I took statistics they told us about these things called “outliers”…
But seriously, I don’t know. I would suspect that you were developing a dominant side, but this was interfered with by your parents or teachers attempting to force a dominant side upon you.
However, I seem to recall that naturally left handed people had a higher incidence of bilateral profiency because the world largely encourages right handededness (both actively and passively). Lefties were more likely to learn some tasks with their non-dominant side than righties were.
Again, no cite for this, I’m just pulling that memory from my nether regions. But if true, I’m sure this muddied the issue for some kids growing up, especially those who were natural lefties.
Mach Tuck, here’s the thing. My mother thought I was ambidextrous, this is what she tried to get across to the school. The school thought that I was a “repressed” left handed child because I would color at times with my left hand, pre-occupied and happy. It really is “as my whimsy takes me” when it comes to doing many things as far as which hand I do them with. (Whichever hand is most convienient usually.) I think my right hand is nominally dominant, though the school was convinced otherwise. I use it for many things without thought, then on a whim I’ll use my left hand becuase the task is closer to that hand. I “taught” myself to write in mirror image with my left hand, but I was doing so with my right hand first. When painting, I use whichever hand will get the best “angle” for the task, so if I want the flower petal to taper right, I use my right hand, to the left, left hand etc. (I STILL hate those fricken’ scissors with three holes they made me use to “train” me to use my left hand again, they HURT!) I couldn’t see very well, which did affect some hand eye coordination, and in time I adapted and can do most things well. Even play basketball. Baseball, not so much.
I see where I may have confused someone. When reflexisively reacting to something, which hand I use depends on which side is getting the stimulus. The indescision comes from having time to choose. Like painting, I have to switch back and forth, in softball, I have to decide which glove to wear, in pool I may line up both ways before choosing. But, my reflexes are just fine. In fact, often swifter than a handed persons.
Mach, it is interesting that you would say that. When I was in kindegarten, my parents put me into speech therapy. Not so much because of a stutter, but because sometimes my words come out garbled, like I have too much spit in my mouth. I stopped with the lessons when I got to first grade, but all throughout school kids would tease me because of my “retarded” voice.
To this day, I’m still self-conscious about the way I speak. Sometimes I stutter (like when I’m very nervous), but more often I stammer, which is more like repeating a word rather than a syllable. I don’t know if I’ve always had this affliction, or if it developed recently. It also could be that I’m blowing things out of proportion. I’ve never had a hard time with public speaking, and when I’m not speaking off the cuff, I can be quite eloquent. So I dunno.
When I’m steering with one hand, I use only the left. Never the right. Just noticed that a couple of days ago, and now I’m wondering if that has something to do with its greater strength.
Zoe, yup, there’s “two” of me. She’s even a Doper, but I’m not going to say who. You’ll just have to guess!
A poll of sorts for the good people on this thread:
Are both of your hands the same size?
Is your dominant hand the larger one, if there is a difference?
I ask because I’ve been totally freaked out since my discovery about my monstrous left hand. My hands are everything to me. How in the world could I have not noticed that they were so freaking different!?