The Difference Between
Being Left-Handed and Right-Handed
About 90 percent of the world’s population is right-handed and only 10 percent is left-handed. It is exceptionally rare for a true ambidexterity. Most left-handed people develop some mixed-handedness by living in a world where most everyday objects are for right-handed people (Balter, 2009). Balter says “one researcher hot on the trail of these issues is Natalie Uomini, an archeologist at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom” (2009). Uomini states that handedness does not mean that one hand is more dominant over the other. She rather says that “both hands have different but equally important manual dexterity whereas the left hand might perform the more mundane but nevertheless crucial role of supporting an object” (Balter, 2009). Most children begin to emerge between the ages of seven and thirteen months and are well-established by age three (Balter, 2009). When figuring out when such consistency arose in humans is not an easy task. In small number of cases, it is possible to detect signs of handedness in early human fossils by the size of the shoulder and arm bones. There is a clear destination as indicated by the deeper bone insertions of the deltoid muscles in his clavicle and the greater length of the ulna (Balter, 2009). Uomini found out that even though hand bias may be hard to detect among early humans, there is clear evidence from the large number of Neandertal skeletons. The Neandertal skeletons that use to be our evolutionary cousins tended to be right-handed. Balter states that “their right arms and shoulders show greater robusticity, possibly from throwing spears as they hunted wild animals” (2009). The technology-dense lifestyle of early humans has required our ancestors to more or less make up their minds about what hands they were going to use to perform complex task. “Moreover, such hand bias could have aided the learning process as humans taught each other tool making and other skills; a number of studies have shown that people learn manually difficult tasks, such as knot-tying, more easily when they use the same left- and right-hand movement as their teacher” (Balter, 2009). The newer view of handedness is not a simple preference for one hand because the two hands actually work together in more suitable ways. For example, when writing, it is not a simple matter of one hand being dominant and writing on the paper. For right-handed people, the left hand is involved in important ways. It grips the paper and provides the context from which the right hand operates. With that being said the right hand appears more specialized for finer movements and the left for broader, contextual movements (“Handedness”, 2012).
The division of labor in the brain is the most commonly accepted theory of handedness. The premise of this theory is that both speaking and handiwork require fine motor skills. Having one hemisphere of the brain do both would be more efficient than having it divided up. If all the functions were carried out in both hemispheres the size of the brain and its energy consumption would increase. “Since in most people the left side of the brain controls speaking, right-handedness would prevail. It also predicts that left-handed people would have a reversed brain division of labor” (“handedness”, 2012). There are some advantages in sports when it comes to be left and right-handedness. The advantages to players in one-on-one sports such as tennis, boxing, fencing, and judo is that in a population contains ten percent left-handers and ninety percent right-handers. When playing, about ninety percent of left-handers play his or her games against right-handed opponents and is well-practiced at dealing with this challenge, and ninety percent right-handers play their games against other right-handers. So when they are faced with a left-hander they are less practiced. When two left-handers compete against each other, they are both likely to be at the same level just like two right-handed opponents. “This explains why a disproportionately high number of left-handers are found in sports in which direct one-on-one action predominates (“Handedness”, 2012). Other sports-specific factors may increase or decrease the advantage left-handers usually hold in one-on-one situations. Such as baseball, left-handedness gives a pitcher an advantage over the batters. “However, because a left-handed pitcher faces first base when throwing from the stretch position, whereas a right-hander throwing from the stretch has his back to fist and instead faces third base, left-handed pitchers are generally better than right-hander at noticing and picking off base-runners attempting to steal second base” (“Handedness”, 2012). With that being said there is a great difference in right and left-handers who play sports which varies to each sport. There are other general advantages that some studies have shown that left-handers also tend to have unusually good visual-spatial skills and the ability to imagine spatial layouts. “Santrock goes on to point out that mathematicians, musicians, architects, and artists are more commonly left-handers than would be expected. Also, in one study of more than 100,000 students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), twenty percent of the top-scoring group was left-handed, twice the rate of left-handedness found in the general population (ten percent)” (“Handedness”, 2012).
It is possible to have disadvantages in learning. Although there is little association with children’s school performance in regards to handedness. Some studies have shown problems in language development in left-handers. “Research has shown left-handers are more likely to have problems with reading and they also” …don’t do as well on phonology (the sound system of language) tasks…” when compared with right-handers” (“Handedness”, 2012). “The percentage of left-handers in the population seems to be relatively constant, at ten percent, and this goes back to studies of cave painting, looking at which hands hunters are using to hold their spears, and to archaeological analyses of ancient artifacts” (Klass, 2011). Even though there has been prejudice against left-handers, and though there may be some developmental risk, there clearly must be advantages as well. The reason why it maintains that way, nobody knows what it is. Indeed, there seems to a certain fascination with figuring out the areas in which left-handers seem to shine (Klass, 2011).