I went to several Nicaraguan League baseball games, and I noticed that there are virtually no LH hitters or pitchers. I asked my host aboujt that. He thought for a minute, and said every kid in Nicaragua works in the sugar cane fields. They all learn to be right handed, because nobody wants to be in a cane field with somebody swinging a machete left handed.
I am right handed and of sound mind. So there’s that.
My understanding is that an ambidextrous person is one who is equally skilled with both hands. An ambidextrous person can write with both hands equally well. Ambidexterity is extremely rare. In contrast, a mixed handed person uses his right hand for some things and his left for other things. If you envision handedness as a spectrum rather than a dichotomy, a mixed handed person lives somewhere in the gray middle between right- and left-handed. This means it is possible for some people to be more mixed handed than others.
You don’t have to be weirdly socialized to be mixed-handed.
Mixed-handedness is tied to mixed laterality. “Mixed” people not only have mixed handedness, but mixed body parts, like a dominant right eye with a dominant left ear.
I did not have scholastic problems as a kid. But I’ve dealt with speech and coordination struggles my whole life. I also have Tourette’s and sometimes can be a little obsessive. A lot of people seem to think that mixed handedness is the cause of these kind of difficulties, so they freak out when a kid is made to be a rightie in the classroom. I don’t like that conversions still happen, but I can’t muster up outrage since it is hard for me to see how converting someone’s handedness can screw them up that badly. What I tend to think is that if your kid is pre-school age and still doesn’t have a dominant hand, there’s a good possibility that his or her brain is a little different in a potentially problematic way. So you need to look closer at them and look for other signs. When I think back on my early childhood, there were all kind of red flags of developmental delay. They were noticed, but ultimately shrugged off because 1970s.
I see your point, but I do think it can screw up a kid badly to be forced one way or another - as in the examples I used, writers and artists have been destroyed this way. I guess it doesn’t matter as much now that so much of ‘‘writing’’ is typing, but who knows how else this can screw you up - or potentially endanger your life, in cases where you would be safer using your left vs. right hand. ISTM there are legitimate risks associated with being forced to use your non-dominant hand, from lost artistic potential to accident and injury. I shudder to think of the damage I could have inflicted upon my already clumsy self with right-handed scissors.
My grandmother repeatedly told me that I was mixed because of how I did gymnastics as a child. Apparently, my feet don’t follow my handedness. I have a shit ton of weird neurological things going on, from ADHD to epilepsy, but who can say what is the cause?
I’m an obligate right hander. Except someone once claimed I dealt cards wrong handed. I can deal either way and it is not obvious to me that there is a natural handedness to dealing since both hands are involved.
I once read that someone took out the baseball record book (where handedness is carefully recorded) and discovered that right handers lived about 9 months longer than lefties. What was really shocking about this study was that the average age of death for each was 65 years more or less. Consider that none of them died in childhood and they were all unusually healthy in their 20s.
One thing I have noticed is that some left handers seem to be unusually awkward. Whether this is the result of living in a right handed society or is a sign of mild impairment that turned them into lefties I cannot say.
President Garfield was a true ambi. He could write equally well with either hand.
In fact, he could write with both hands simultaneously. In Latin with one hand, and in Greek with the other. :eek:
Same here… I write with my left hand, but use scissors with my right hand, bowl with my right arm, and shoot a rifle right-handed.
I’m pretty sure I was a natural southpaw coerced into using my right hand for everything. I don’t know if that counts as mixed-handed but even though there are lot of things I have only developed skill with in my right hand I still frequently attempt to use my left for many things, often having to switch hands to do things right. When my right hand was in a cast people said my left-handed writing was more legible than my usual right-handed scrawl. I have no doubt this situation has been a factor in the craziness of my personality.
That’s pretty stupid if the testing is dealing with a population that was subject to forced-handedness. It also means that a large chunk of the population is excluded and that a variable which is known (or at least believed) to be relevant is being deliberately disregarded. Instead of getting information on whether being left-handed, mixed-handed, right-handed but specifically trained as lefty for some things, or forced-righty actually does make a difference, we just treat anybody other than the Standard Monkey* as atypical.
- My brother’s Physics teacher in college liked to include a Standard Monkey in exercises. A student once asked “what’s the standard monkey’s species?” “standard” “size, mass…?” “standard” “sex?” “standard. It’s just perfectly standard.”
Imagine a spherical monkey.
It wasn’t REtrain, it was not allowing the kid to use the left hand. In my case it involved yells that “the left hand is the Devil’s hand!!!” and having to bunch up that hand’s fingers to be hit on them with a cuadradillo (a meter-long, square stick used to measure cloth). When that comes from your very first teacher (in my case the bitch at the kindergarten), someone who’s much larger than you and has absolute authority over you for what to a toddler feels like eternal hours, it is pretty traumatizing. I credit that so-called teacher and the next one with a good chunk of my distrust of People In Authority.
I learned to use my right hand in art school. It was exercise we did to compare drawing thru-out the term. I got quite good at it. I am a lefty from birth, no one tried to force anything on me in grade school. I write with my wrist curved around the paper, in that awkward fashion you have all seen. When I write or draw right handed I don’t do that. And , I am not crazy ( well maybe alittle wacko!) . 2 of my kids are lefties.
Women are also excluded from certain studies (or at least very much used to be). Yes, it’s stupid. In college, Sr. Weasel was the subject of a really cool study in which he received his very own brain scan image and I wasn’t allowed to do it because I’m a lefty.
I’ve been thinking about this and I think handedness would be a good allegory for explaining privilege.
Left hander here.
Does “mixed handed” mean only those who choose to mix the dominant hand in various tasks? Or does it include those who are forced due to the design of objects around them?
I use my left hand unless it’s too much trouble. I use right for mouse, scissors, shooting (don’t need a lefty rifle), and a host of other things where it’s difficult or expensive to buck the right handed norms.
Son-of-a-wrek uses his computer mouse left-handed. I don’t.
He was taught to shoot right-handed in sniper school in the Corps.
Surely not.
The correct term is hambivalence.
I knew someone who could write simultaneously with BOTH FEET. The result was indistinguishable from her handwriting.
Yeah, that’s me, I always figured that whoever was teaching me those things had no time for a silly left-hander, and that was probably my parents.
Oddly enough, a friend convinced me once to shoot left handed and I was a better shot that way.
But eat and write is left handed. Never checked to see what hand I flush with.
You sound like your experience was administered by nuns, mine was by well-meaning somewhat hippy young public school teacher. So while it was still a weird thing to try, it was not a horror movie at least. Oh, for me it was 1st grade.