Why lefties are smarter




















Design Co. Design Forget wind turbines. Start harnessing the tides for energy Co. Design Why fashion brands are collaborating with dead midcentury architects Co. Design The brilliant ways big business is pushing its climate agenda during COP Work Life Work Life A 5-point agenda to help galvanize a team of new hires Work Life Why leaders need to resist the urge to fix everything Work Life A once-dependable team is letting me down at a crucial time. How do I fix this? This type of damage could be caused by a hemispheric lesion that occurs prenatally, according to a study in the journal Brain and Cognition.

If the lesions occur in the left hemisphere of the brain, then this could lead the individual to predominantly use the right half of their brain. Since the hemispheres of the brain are cross-indexed meaning the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and vice versa , a dominant right hemisphere can lead to left-handedness.

The study refers to this as "pathological left-handedness," and noted that it can lead to learning difficulties. In other words, sometimes being lefty is associated with learning problems. It's complex, but Sala's study paints a picture of left-handers being over-represented at both the bottom and top of the cognitive spectrum. However, he cautions that his results are not the final word, and that further studies must be done.

What's more, other data shows that righties have a slight intellectual edge over lefties. In one demonstration , researchers found that the more marked the left-handed preference in a group of males, the better they were at tests of divergent thought.

Left-handers were more adept, for instance, at combining two common objects in novel ways to form a third—for example, using a pole and a tin can to make a birdhouse. They also excelled at grouping lists of words into as many alternate categories as possible. Another recent study has demonstrated an increased cognitive flexibility among the ambidextrous and the left-handed—and lefties have been found to be over-represented among architects , musicians , and art and music students as compared to those studying science.

Part of the explanation for this creative edge may lie in the greater connectivity of the left-handed brain. The explanation could also be a much more prosaic one: in , a group of Connecticut College psychologists suggested that the creativity boost was a result of the environment, since left-handers had to constantly improvise to deal with a world designed for right-handers.

Strongly handed individuals, both right and left, were at a slight disadvantage compared to those who occupied the middle ground—both the ambidextrous and the left-handed who, through years of practice, had been forced to develop their non-dominant right hand. Whatever the ultimate explanation may be, the advantage appears to extend to other types of thinking, too. In a study of students who had scored in the top of their age group on either the math or the verbal sections of the S.

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