Idle questions for the weekend which I’ve not researched or googled.

A girl at work left me a note to look on the right hand side of a display monitor for something which I didn’t see, she then watched it with me and said ‘look, there on the bottom right’, I said, ‘you mean bottom left’.

She admitted she has problems telling left from right but the interesting point is that when I ask if she is left handed she says ‘No, right handed’ and holds up her right hand when asked which one she writes with.
So she knows she is right handed and which one she uses to write but still can’t tell left from right when giving or receiving directions.

I’m left handed and always know which is left and which is right; it seems as obvious as front/back or up/down.
My g/f is right handed and wore Rings on Right hand for her driving test and now when she is driving I will give directions by saying ‘next crossroads, turn your way’ rather than ‘turn right’ , or ‘turn my way’ instead of ‘turn left’. (in Britain we drive on the left so driver sits on the right).
My g/f also knows she is right handed but telling her left or right confuses her.

It seems to me (via very small samples) that left handed people know left from right more often than right handers (always?), and that people who don’t know (or struggle to know) are normally right handed.


So, question are:
Do you struggle to tell left from right?
Are you left or right handed?
Is it equally men and women who struggle?
Might it be because left handers are normally told they’re left handed from an early age?
If you have problems telling, do you struggle to follow sat-nav directions?
Will having to follow sat-nav instructions improve telling left from right?


Have a good weekend and I’ll check back next week. klik

I'm male and right-handed, and I have no trouble telling left from right. As you said, it's almost instinctive, like front-back or up-down.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

With the monitor, maybe she was thinking of the monitor facing you two instead of you two facing it.

It's always bugged me that some people talk about the "right-hand" side of an object with no hands, instead of just the "right" side. But in light of what you're saying, although I never noticed it myself, maybe it's a memory aid for people who remember right & left more easily in application to hands than in other applications!

I have trouble with telling right from left all the time (I'm right-handed). Apparently I was born without this "instinct" (which is actually a conditioned reflex, as directions don't have instinctive names, that's just the arbitrariness of language) and I have to stop and consciously think about it every time. I also sometimes get letters or numbers reversed, so I may have a touch of dislexia, aggravating the problem.

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People sometimes use the term "right-hand" rather than just "right" to distinguish right/left from right/wrong. For example, "Take the right fork" could be ambiguous, but "Take the right-hand fork" is not.

Handedness (and the left/right distinction) is an interesting thing, and entire books have been written about it. On the human scale, there's ambiguity because our bodies have (external) bilateral symmetry. There's no fundamental difference between left and right on that level, as there is between, say, far and near.

Even at a more basic level, there's no significant physical difference between left and right. Martin Gardner once posed the question, suppose you were communicating with distant intelligent aliens and had to get across the concept of left/right -- and distinguish one from the other. How would you tell them which was which? It's not as simple as it may seem. A television picture (or other coded image) could be reconstructed either way; planets and galaxies aren't all spin-aligned; and so on.

It turns out that there are some subtle right-left (or spin direction) differences in certain very small scale (subatomic) processes that could be exploited to define an arbitrary left-right standard. But these have virtually no impact on the macro level.

So the real question is not why some people have problems with handedness, but how on Earth do any of us tell left from right?

ETA: Gardner's book is called The Ambidextrous Universe. There's a thread on this topic in Q&A. Here's a link to grant hutchinson's solution for the problem of defining left/right to a distant alien:
How can we define left and right to an alien life form?

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Left handed. Hopeless at telling left from right. Used to scare hell out of the man who taught me to fly.
("Bit more left rudder. LEFT rudder. OTHER LEFT!")

Grant Hutchison

I'm right handed, and have no trouble with left and right.

I think that it is the make up of the brain, left hemisphere commanding right hand and is the logical side, and right hemisphere commanding the left hand is the artistic side.

I think that I have always found the left side more darker, associated with perhaps art(I had a place at art college at one time, so drawing was a big part of my life at one stage), and the right side I feel has more to do with maths and thinking, reading.

I think this is how I tell the difference.

Hold your hands straight up in front of you with your thumgs at a 90 degree angle to your fingers. Your left hand makes an 'L'. That's how you tell the difference.

On a more serious note - I tend to give directions using north, south, east, west. I think it's more clear as one doesn't have to worry as much about every subsequent direction getting screwed up if they mess up one. And I use street names for clarity. My wife hates it though. She prefers, "Turn left on the first street past the gas station."

I'm very right handed and I have no trouble telling left from right. The only time it can be a bit confusing is if the perspective is confused. For example, on the monitor issue. Is it the right side of the monitor as you look at it? Or is it the right side of the monitor from where it sits facing you? To be more clear - when I'm facing you - your right hand is on my left hand side. - edited to add - I see Delvo addressed this already.

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Final thought on this one.

The vast majority of individuals we meet will be right handed - so I would guess you'll meet more right handed individuals who struggle with right/left relationships that left handed. You'll also meet more who don't struggle.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

I'm with her. I need landmarks, and I need to know where to turn. Trying to drive and read (especially with my bad eyesight) or drive and check a compass, is distracting and dangerous. I'm a monotasker, I guess.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Ought not to be confusing - it's a long-existing standard. When a photograph caption lists the people "left to right," do you wonder which side you're supposed to start on? Don't we (in English, anyway) always read printed words "left to right"?

Why would a monitor screen be any different?

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

While you and I may agree on the standard - another person who also has no trouble telling left from right, but is ignorant of the standard could easily lead to confusion.

When facing a person, do you say:

On the right.
On your right.
On my right.

The second two are clear, but the first could be ambiguous and lead to confusion. What if the monitor is between the two people communicating? Then what's clear?

All I'm saying is that right left confusion doesn't always mean the person can't tell left from right.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Well, yes, standards only work if you're aware of the standards - and "left" and "right" themselves are arbitrary standards. Nonetheless, anybody who wouldn't be confused by "I'm the guy on the left in that picture" ought not to be confused by "the icon is on the lower left corner of the monitor."

I think the girl in Klik's OP who referenced the monitor is clearly somebody who has trouble - in general - with "left" and "right," not someone who's only confused about computer monitors.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

As scatter-brained as I am, I have no problem with left/right. Now communication issues can still arise; for instance, when describing left and right, one needs to know if you mean the observer's left/right, the speaker's left/right, or the described object's left/right. This is what makes left/right description's pretty ambiguous.

That's why, when talking about damage to a car (something that comes up a lot when you work in insurance), I always say "Driver's side" and "passenger's side". Sometimes people act like you're stupid for saying that, because you must not know right from left, but I do it because it leaves no room for error.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

That's how I learned it, too. Of course, even though I don't write longhand much anymore, there's still a callus on my middle finger from holding a pen a lot, so I can tell my left from my right by that if nothing else. Though I haven't been confused by it in, well, decades now. (Female; right-handed.)

The problem with your way of giving directions is that you have to know which way is north. There is no instinctive way of knowing that; your right and left hands are always with you.

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Gillian

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"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I also prefer North/South/East/West, because as I read through dirrections to some place, I get a great mental image of where I'm going and it's easier for me to remember. If I'm just reading "turn right. right. left. right. leftish. left again. then right." if I miss a turn, I end up totally lost. But with the former, if I miss a turn I still know what generally dirrection I need to aim for.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

I'm female and right handed. I've noticed that when stretched out, the pointer and thumb of the left hand make an "L" for "left", so I don't usually get confused.

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I'm left-handed for most things, and male. Sometimes I do need to pause and think about is left and what is right, though usually there's no problem.

What I find confusing is that left and right are relative. When you are facing someone, your right is their left, and vice-versa. If you take a 180º turn, your right and left switch directions, too.

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That's how I tell light from reft, too.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)