The task requires many higher cognitive functions, including the integration of visual information, language and memory, as well as being able to rotate objects in your mind.Ī significant portion of the population struggles to learn which side is which.
The neurological processes that underpin left-right discrimination are complex. Gerry Gormley, Queens University Belfast, UK The concept of left and right is complicated by being linked to the observer, so spatial awareness is needed to learn that your right may be someone else’s left. While top and bottom and front and back are very distinct from one another and have physical realities, left and right have little visible difference except for being mirror images of one another. Many of the animal and plant kingdoms have bilateral symmetry. The French word for left means clumsy, while the Italian word means sinister. “Left”, by contrast, comes from the Old English word lyft, meaning weak. In Latin and Italian, it is associated with dexterity. In languages such as French, Spanish and English, the word for right has positive connotations of being correct, straight and direct. It can be associated with dyslexia and dyspraxia, as well as difficulty telling the time. One study found that up to a third of people have problems with it sometimes. Mixing up left and right is surprisingly common. ‘Left’ comes from the Old English word lyft, meaning weak” “In many languages, the word for right has positive connotations. After a few years, the pattern was fixed in my mind. So when I had to choose between left and right, I just looked at my thumbs.
Going left right skin#
However, I was a thumb-sucker, and my Eureka moment came when I worked out that the skin on my right thumb looked different from that on my left, due to the sucking. Guy Cox, St Albans, New South Wales, AustraliaĪs a young boy, I had real trouble telling left from right. The ancient Romans were probably less likely to get the two confused since their word for left, “ sinister“, came to be associated with misfortune and their word for right, “ dexter“, with things being beneficial and correct. It seems to be a matter of semantics: the terms “left” and “right” don’t carry the same sort of natural meaning as other words for location, such as “above” or “behind”.
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