Social challenges

10/04/2019

Social challenges

One of the biggest challenges facing left-handers and that has been tried to change in recent years is the lack of adequate tools for their unique form of laterality.

In the last 40 years, special desks or school desks have been designed for left-handers, but scissors and kitchen knives have also been designed and marketed for left-handed, left-handed guitars and, in the case of the United States Army, they have also been designed and manufactured assault rifles special for lefties.

The visibility of left-handers and the defense of their rights and equity in their employment has increased since the arrival in the United States presidency of different left-handed politicians, such as former presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush (father), Bill Clinton and the current president Barack Obama.

Why are some left-handed? Causes, advantages and disadvantages

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Rgvecchio

Being right-handed or left-handed is the result of the way the brain organizes and distributes its workloads.

As part of the Day of the Left-Handers, held every August 13, since 1922, the University of Texas at Dallas published an excerpt of recent medical and psychological findings about the lives of left-handed people.

The set of studies includes findings from the University of Durham, England, as well as Imperial College London and the universities of Minnesota and Texas, in the United States.

Being left-handed is a characteristic that has to do with a human attribute called laterality, which consists of the unequal distribution of fine motor skills between the left and right hands. The American Psychological Association recognizes four types of laterality:

Right-handers or people who have more skill with the right hand

Lefties or people who have more skill with the left hand

Ambidextrous or people who have exactly the same ability to perform tasks with both hands

Crossed or mixed side, which are people who can perform different tasks with different hands, but without there being symmetry between the two.

The same American Association of Psychology calculates that between 10% and 15% of all people are left-handed. This characteristic is much more common among men than among women. In England it has been counted that up to 13% of male children in schools are left-handed, while only 9% of girls have this characteristic of laterality.

A recent data, published in 2011, indicates that in Chimpanzees there is also a percentage close to 10% of left-handed individuals.