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From: zwicky@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Left Handed programmers (was Sinister Hackers 8-))
Message-ID: <32590@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com>
Date: 22 Aug 90 21:56:29 GMT
References: <1488@chinacat.Unicom.COM> <19624@well.sf.ca.us> <12772@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1990Aug20.084113@bert.llnl.gov> <1990Aug21.154720.4513@sco.COM>
Reply-To: zwicky@pterodactyl.itstd.sri.com.UUCP (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025
Lines: 24

In article <1990Aug21.154720.4513@sco.COM> seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) writes:
>Handedness is physiological, not psychological.  In left-handed people, the
>right side of the brain is "dominant"; the reverse is true for right-handed
>people.

It's truer to say that for right-handed people, the left side of the
brain is dominant, and for everybody else, it isn't. Most
"left-handed" people are actually people with no clearly dominant
hemisphere. It does depend on how you define "right-handed"; I
am usually considered right-handed, because I write with that hand,
although I am actually non-handed, so to speak. This is not uncommon,
because so many teachers insist that children write right-handed if
they can be forced to do so. You can be purely left-handed for some
tasks without actually being right-dominant, too, which confuses the
issue further for people who are trying to be exact. Generally, it
doesn't bother psychologists any, because they divide the world simply
into right-handed and not-right-handed, where "right-handed" really
means "left-hemisphere dominant". They have tests, although one once
told me that there was no point in scoring them, really; everyone who
has to pantomime things to answer the questions (which mostly ask
which hand or which foot you do things with) is not-right-handed, and
the scores are only a matter of degree.

	Elizabeth Zwicky