Assignment: Living Life as a Left-Hander for a Day

According to the theory of lateralisation developed by Robert Sperry and Robert Ornstein, the cerebral cortex in the two hemispheres perform the same motor and sensory functions but each of the hemisphere is specialized for different tasks. As the brain develops, the left hemisphere is superior in doing tasks that involve speech, language, reading, and writing. The right hemisphere shows superiority in tasks that involves creativity, intuition, facial recognition, non-verbal imagery, musical recognition, sense of direction, play and sports, learning experience and risk-taking. Lateralisation is developed for the task that is done, that is the right hemisphere is used for a particular function. This decision is influenced by genetics, childhood learning experiences and

In 10 Myths About Psychology, Ben Ambridge discusses many of the myths that are used in psychology. The first common myth is about gender. Many believe that women are better with grammar and men are more intelligent when it comes to reading maps. While this is true the difference between the two genders in each of these subjects is very minimal. However, many believe that there is a dramatic difference. Another interesting myth involves being a right or left brained learner. In school many are led to believe that one side of the brain involves creativity and the other works with equations. Depending on which side of the brain is more active dictates which type of learner a person is. This leads to the assumption that left-handed people

The left side sees and interprets the world in symbols and languages. However the right side interprets it in terms of space and shape.

The objective of my experiment was to see how people reacted to a violation in the social norms of elevator etiquette. Generally in elevators, people are expected to fill in starting from the back, facing the elevator doors, rarely making verbal contact, with the possible exception of finding out which floor people are heading to. Unless the passengers of the elevator know each other, conversation is sparse and often limited to small-talk. As a result of this, my goal in the experiment was to introduce a foreign behavior to the elevator, something that nobody would expect while going about their day. Thus, I entered a situation where a certain set of expectations were in place, such as the informal rule that individuals should stand (rather than sit) in an elevator, and violated those unspoken rules without actually doing anything that would not be perfectly acceptable in another social setting.

One in 10 people reading this is left-handed. There are nearly 34 million of us living in the United States, and about 500 million in the world. Throughout history, though, lefties have been looked down upon.

I have two basic expectations from this exercise regarding the reactions of others. From those I have missed informing about the exercise, I expect complete surprise and even a bit of consternation. They may believe that I have developed some sort of mental condition. Those I have informed will not be surprised, but I do expect them to react at least with some hostility to my new "personality."

When you hear the word “sinistra”, what word does it sound close to? It sounds closely to the word “sinister” and with that you think sinistra means dark or evil. However, sinistra’s meaning has no thing to do with darkness or evil; it is Latin for left or left handed. With this misunderstanding of the word sinistra and other reasons, left-handed people faced years of social and religious oppression. Hello, I’m Josh Haxton a lefty and I have always been curious about the history of left handers. Through my research, I was able to end by curiosity. Today I’m going to inform you of the history of left-handedness and famous left-handed people in history.

Growing up left handed in a private school was seen as “the work of the devil,” and often times, I was smacked with a ruler on my knuckles and forced to use my right hand. As ambidextrous as I pretended to be, it was often a struggle sitting in a right-handed desk, and using right handed scissors. Not having the ability to use my left hand during this experiment brought me back to the “good old days” when I was shunned for using my left hand. I can most definitely say that this experiment related to issues surrounding cultural diversity because it seems that whatever the dominant culture is, they have a sense of seniority to the minority. In conclusion, I feel that the issues in cultural diversity will always be a struggle, or tug of war between the majority and minority. We need to realize and accept everyone for who they are and the beauty they posses, that way, we can build with each other and eventually take our hands from inside the sock and interlock it with the person standing beside

The other test held was an auditory test. The test was done in two different ways. One way was finding the objects in a bag that were mentioned verbally and the other was identifying the item reached by touch. This test’s results were also supporting the previous researchers’ logical conclusion about the left hemisphere ability of speech. It confirmed the right hemisphere’s ability of comprehending language and its ability of expressing it in a nonverbal way. During the test, evidently, the right hemisphere had no trouble identifying the unknown objects by touch as the left hemisphere did. Moreover, some three- dimensional drawings of the slit-brain patients, who were all right handed, developed much better drawings using their left hands compared with their right hands.

Pink’s argument that we are moving out of a left-brain dominance and in to a new era where right brain qualities will be prized is well illustrated in part one the book. According to Pink “the two hemispheres of our brain don’t operate as on-off switches…both halves play a role in nearly everything we do” (2011). Pink suggests that both hemisphere of the brain are equally important. In fact, “a healthy,

Mead & Hampson (1996) developed a study involving the divided visual field paradigm and a phonological rhyme/non-rhyme task to test the speed and accurateness of either side of the brain. This study was used to investigate functional asymmetry between the left and right hemispheres in phonological processing. The research was taken out equally on 15 male and 15 females London Metropolitan University students ranging from ages 18 – 35 years old. They were all specifically chosen to be right–handed and had English as their first language thus providing a fair experiment to see whether our left hemisphere (left side of the brain) or the right hemisphere is faster and more accurate. In conclusion using the mean and standard

For many decades people have been considered to be either right or left side dominant in regards to brain function which came with defined roles such as “creative” or “analytical”. This thinking tends to be over-simplified as most people use their entire brains daily (Jensen, 2010). On the other hand people do use different parts of their brain for different tasks according to how they perceive those tasks.

Left-right brain dominance is about the fact that the distinct hemispheres influence thinking. The left hemisphere is associated with logical, analytical thinking and a linear approach to problem solving. The right hemisphere is associated with creative, intuitive and value-based thought process. It is important to note that everyone uses its both hemispheres, but to varying degrees. Four quadrants of the brain, related to different thinking style, have been identified:

Right brain? Left brain? Both sides are very different and have their own characteristics that help determine what a persons potential strengths and weaknesses will be. “The human brain is split into two halves, each with its own unique abilities. This phenomenon, discovered three decades ago by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Roger Sperry and his associates at the California Institute of Technology, is known as brain lateralization” (Raudsepp, 1992, p. 85). Certain characteristics of a person can go so much deeper then just hobbies that a person enjoys. Brain function can play a major role in how a person perceives their surroundings, such as if someone like to draw or do math. On the other side of that if a person is very analytical and good at subjects in school such as math it could be linked to which side of their brain is dominant.

People who are left brain tend to approach each problem with an analytical point of view. Right