I came across this when looking into a combination of factors; left-handedness, increased spatial reasoning ability, and autism. The path took me on a bit of a journey. As a leftie, I just thought I’d share this one.
I came across this when looking into a combination of factors; left-handedness, increased spatial reasoning ability, and autism. The path took me on a bit of a journey. As a leftie, I just thought I’d share this one.
Wonder if theres a neurological link between dominant hand, or maybe theres still social pressures kids feel to be right handed and us on the spectrum just don’t really feel that, the same way a lot of us seem to be less effected by peer pressure.
My understanding is that handedness is mostly nature, not nurture. You can learn to use the other one, but you’ll never be better than with the naturally dominant hand. A lot of ambidextrous people are actually lefties who either forced themselves or were forced by outside factors to git gud with their right hand.
I had that thought too. But I remember reading about cave paintings where prehistoric people had painted their hands, and the distribution of lefts and rights was consistent with there being the same proportion of lefties as in modern times. And I doubt the social pressures around handedness go back that far.
Genetic? The interesting connection I think is with Fragile X syndrome where a genetic cause is known. There’s a 50% comorbidity with autism. In one study only 37% of subjects had a right hand preference (low numbers, though). There are a bunch of papers looking at handedness and ND. Link
I hadn’t really thought about before this, but I am right handed. Obviously we learn from observation. I can use my left hand for stuff, but don’t probably more from habit and that makes my left hand use more awkward because I have not practiced it. Thinking about it I don’t think it would be difficult to use my left hand for more.
You may fit the category of mixed-handed. Reasonably, I’d think it less likely for a right-handed person to be noticed as mixed-handed unless being tested for it due to the normal nature of right-handedness.
From the link: “Moreover, individuals on the autism spectrum were 2.34 times more likely to be mixed-handed than the general population and 3.48 times more likely to be either left-handed or mixed-handed than the general population.”