righty turning lefty

[boondocks77]

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]

Originally Posted by jewpinthethird

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]]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

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]

I tried. It didn't work out.

[R0nburgundy]

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

[masamursha]

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]

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]

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.

[Cavernio]

About being able to write 2 different things at the same time, I don't think any human being can consciously do so. Why? Try thinking 2 different streams of thought at once. It's impossible for me to do.

I'm open to the idea of perhaps being able to copy two different things with 2 different hands, because motor skills can fairly easily be trained to be done without conscious thought. (Eg: walking, driving a car, throwing a ball.) But I still don't think I'd be able to do that either, because when I copy notes, I copy down words, (or sometimes letters if it's a word I've never seen before,) but both still involve higher processing, and for me, using my phonological buffer. I say the words/letters in my head, and I can't say 2 things in my head at once. I think I'm pretty usual when it comes to this, but I know there're some people who may do things differently that I do. (Dyslexics for example, often don't do the same processes when it comes to reading and writing especially, and maybe the way they do it would be more conducive to being able to writing 2 things at once.)
Then there's people who have their corpus callosum cut for medical reasons, (the bundle of nerves connecting the 2 halves of the brain), and they're definitely disjunct people. The right hand literally doesn't know what the left one does, among many other things. But they still seem to only be able to be aware of 1 of themselves. (Or perhaps that's only because there's 1 side of the brain involved in language and communication, which there largely is, so these people can't ever communicate a second conciousness.)

[-Moo-]

My whole family is left handed...

But I'm right handed.

Amazing huh?

[tsugomaru]

It is really hard to copy two different things at the same time. I only know this because I've tried training myself to do so; however, the results were poor. The easiest way that I've done it is think of the first word of one thought, write it down, switch over to the next thought, write it down, and switch back. This however, takes too long to do and after a couple words, I have no idea what I wanted to write anymore.

~Tsugomaru

[hayatewillown]

Originally Posted by devonin

You're thinking just the left hand.

As an aside, when my father (who was left handed) was in elementary school, his teachers used to tie his left arm behind his back so that he would be -forced- to use his right hand.

As a result he's what I call "Omnidexterous" rather than "Ambidexterous" and it seems like more people here are the former than the latter. To me Ambidexterous means "You can do all things with both hands equally well" and I define Omnidexterous (Which is basically I word I made up, I suppose Bidexterous works just as well) as being "You do roughly an equal number of things with each hand, but do them better with the preferred hand than the other"

So if you throw left, write with your right, kick right and bat left, I don't say that you're ambidexterous, because you aren't -equally- proficient with both hands in all cases.

Then I'm Omnidexterous?

Why exactly did they tie his hand?
Sounds interesting. I hold my gun trigger with my right arm/hand but I throw darts with my left hand. Is it a matter of the way you look or rather the hand dominance?

With me, I can right with both my hands very well, and it was because I broke my right arm in the 6th grade.