In a message dated Mon, 21 Aug 2000  5:13:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Sarre, Jane - EL CDU" <[log in to unmask]> writes:


>>>The womam there said that left handed people tend to be more dyslexic than
righthanded as they have to use the right side of the brian to control their
writing (when language is based in the left side.) As a consequence they
have to process the information more and sometimes it gets a bit scrambled
on it's journey round the brain.

Ya know, I would be very skeptical of that as I am left-handed and my kindergarden teachers thought I was dyslexic as well. There have been numerous studies about how adaptable the brain is and how even with one side not functioning properly, the other side can compensate emensely. I would think that after years of being left-handed, one's brain would have compensated.

I think another, more plausible cause of dyslexia in lefties is having to constantly deal in a right-handed world. Computers are right-handed (though they can be switched to left-handed, few people know this), crank pencil-sharpeners, scissors, can-openers, doors (a judge at a courthouse once told me that they lock the right door to the court room because if someone tries to run out, most people instinctively throw their right hands out first and locking the right-hand side door slows them down. I've noticed that banks tend to do this as well.), spiral notebooks are for righties, rulers and a whole slew of other products are built for righties. It's not that info in the brain has to travel further, it's that lefties are constantly having to switch hands to do anything which can get confusing.

I got back at the right-handed world in my own little way when I worked in the costume shop at university. I bought my own pair of contoured left-handed sewing scissors that were clearly marked as mine. Righties would pick them up and immediately say "Hey, these don't work!!" and plunk them back down. Now imagine how I feel with an entire cabinet full of "scissors that don't work" and my options are to have the grips cut into my hands or to cut like a 2-year-old.

>>Sh also added that because of the increased use of the right side of the
brain, which is the home of spatial and 3d thought, lefties are often
particularly  good at that. In university terms, they often show up doing
archichture, engineering, archaeology - and museum studies!

I've found that to be true in some instances and not in others. Lefties supposedly have an increased percentage of both genius and insanity. My theory is that we either rise above a right-handed world or go insane trying.

Remember, everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it. ;)

Deb

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