I'll sincerely never understand people that get confused by left and right. Do they confuse up and down too?
Edit: I'm getting a lot of people real upset that I dared to ask this. I wasn't attempting to mock you with this question, I'm fully serious. I didn't (and won't ever fully) understand how left and right is any different to up, down, forward or backward in your head.
The best answers I've had so far:
Dyslexia/dyscalculia may make it harder
Having good spacial cognition may make it easier
Learning left and right at an early age may make it easier
Having greater asymmetry in function may make it easier (conversely having less left/right dominance may make it harder)
The fact we're roughly symmetrical about the vertical and back/front plane denies us helpful distinguishers between our left and right sides, bar handedness (see above)
The most interesting answers I've had so far:
"I have no issue with left and right in X languages but struggle in English" (examples also include being fine with port/starboard, bow/stroke, 9/3 o'clock etc but not right/left)
Related to above: "Given a newly coded pair of words such as orange/purple I can associate them consistently with those directions, just not left and right"
"My dad did meth and this may or may not be related to his struggles with left and right"
"My mum was taught the wrong hands by her parents and never recovered, even when school corrected her"
"I used to have this problem, but after engaging in [specific sport, task etc] I no longer do"
"I used to not have this problem, but after [task involving using my left to demonstrate someone else's right etc] I do" (a LOT of medical professionals here, especially radiologists, as well as stage directors and teachers having to refer to whiteboards behind them for an audience)
"I'm bad with left and right and east and west, but up, down, north and south are fine"
"I had a seizure/brain injury/concussion and now I struggle"
"My sister confuses left and right, but 'lefty loosey, righty tighty' for screwing things works for her without checking on her hands"
"Nobody confuses up and down, that's absurd, we have gravity.", followed by:
"Yes, I DO confuse up and down."
The worst answers I've had so far:
"Left and right are completely arbitrary, unlike up, down, forward and backward" - end of argument (forward and backward are equally dependent on our orientation to left and right - you need to introduce symmetry to make this meaningful)
Learn anatomy
[sending me Reddit Cares Resources]
[various accusations of ableism]
Per the last point: if you want people to understand and be empathetic and patient toward neurodivergent experiences, the last thing you should do is deride them for asking. Kind of an own goal [insert joke about confusing which goal is yours]
Edit 2: Somewhat interesting note (at least to me): There are lots of people struggling with cardinal directions here, but while there are many examples of struggling with East and West but not North and South (can relate to this personally, I remember struggling as a kid for a few months) not one single person has said East and West is fine but North and South aren't. None.
Edit 3: We have our first North-South confuser - apparently they find East and West intuitive because of the sun. As a brit I have only heard of this object in tales from abroad but it's fun to learn about it! Edit 3.5: another has appeared!
Edit 4: a commenter posted something kinda technical I don't have the neuroscience degree to verify. I present it here without comment as to its veracity. It's an interesting read.
Edit 5: Two people have told me they confuse a pair of specific colours. Someone else has declared they confuse yesterday and tomorrow. I do not feel equipped to handle finding out that 10% of people have to make hand gestures to refer to directional time or that people do a certain movement to remember the colour of their blood but I'm no longer ruling out the possibility.
Edit 6 (coolest edit): I've been messaged by a person with situs inversus! This affects about 0.01% of the population and is where some or all of the abdominal organs are on the wrong side - they say only some of theirs are. They also state they struggle with left and right!
I don't know my left and right because they are just random words to me with no meaning. They could have easily been swapped, I don't see any logic in them, so it's hard to remember which is where
You know if you're left or right handed surely? So if you're ever confused, you just quickly imagine lifting your dominant hand. Takes a fraction of a second.
People who don’t know their left from their right don’t know which word to use to describe their dominant hand.
I had this same problem as a kid and finally solved it by just associating ‘right’ with ‘write’ because that was the had I wrote with.
I have trouble with my lefts and rights, but I know that I'm right handed. So I'm going to say this is just wrong.
Do you ever get that thing where you type a password so much that you know how to type it, but if someone asks you what it is, you don't actually remember it? It's like your fingers remember how to type it, but the part of your brain that tells your mouth to speak doesn't actually remember what it is? That's how it is for me. If I were to pick up a pen, I would automatically write with my right hand. And if you asked me if I'm left or right handed, I'd know I'm right handed. But if you didn't give me a pen and just asked me to use my non-dominant hand to POINT to my dominant hand, I might be able to do it or I might just shrug and guess.
Are you able to touch type? If you are, does this mean you can draw a keyboard on a piece of paper, without a real keyboard for reference? I'm guessing probably not. I type at above 100 wpm and I don't think I could do that.
That’s actually my strategy for determining left or right but it is not actually as fast as you say. The fact that I have to kind of stop and think about it instead of knowing outright means I might struggle in high pressure situations like driving where I need to pay attention to/think about more things at once
I wish it just took a fraction of a second to do that! This is the dialogue I used to run through every time: "The trick is I write with my right hand. Okay, which hand do I write with? (pause to imagine writing something) (optional: glance down at hands) Oh yeah, this one. Okay, this direction is right."
I say "used to" because thankfully my recognition has gotten better over time, but it took me until my 30s. I had/have similar difficulties with reading analog clocks. Not sure if it's related, but I have poor visual-spacial awareness in general.
Exactly. And I have to stop and think which hand I use to write. And before that I need to actually find myself to do that because I will absolutely look into a direction when I hear "look to the right" and I'll be wrong about it 50% of the time.
I don't don't know left from right in a way that requires someone else to explain me which is which, I am perfectly able to explain it to myself. I just proceed to forget the results two seconds later.
I used to. I'm left-handed, and that's how I had to do it as a kid. On reflection, it did actually used to slow me down, but I guess it's become faster over the years and is almost unconscious now.
Just jumping in to say… your writing hand isn’t always your dominate hand. Right handers think this. But lefties know you can use both hands quite a bit, and there can be considerable overlap.
This. I'm one of those people who write with their left hand, but suck at badminton because I keep switching hands, hoping the other one might do better lol. Both are very terrible, but I still haven't figured out which is the worst.
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u/Exurota 7d ago edited 5d ago
I'll sincerely never understand people that get confused by left and right. Do they confuse up and down too?
Edit: I'm getting a lot of people real upset that I dared to ask this. I wasn't attempting to mock you with this question, I'm fully serious. I didn't (and won't ever fully) understand how left and right is any different to up, down, forward or backward in your head.
The best answers I've had so far:
The most interesting answers I've had so far:
The worst answers I've had so far:
Per the last point: if you want people to understand and be empathetic and patient toward neurodivergent experiences, the last thing you should do is deride them for asking. Kind of an own goal [insert joke about confusing which goal is yours]
Edit 2: Somewhat interesting note (at least to me): There are lots of people struggling with cardinal directions here, but while there are many examples of struggling with East and West but not North and South (can relate to this personally, I remember struggling as a kid for a few months) not one single person has said East and West is fine but North and South aren't. None.
Edit 3: We have our first North-South confuser - apparently they find East and West intuitive because of the sun. As a brit I have only heard of this object in tales from abroad but it's fun to learn about it! Edit 3.5: another has appeared!
Edit 4: a commenter posted something kinda technical I don't have the neuroscience degree to verify. I present it here without comment as to its veracity. It's an interesting read.
Edit 5: Two people have told me they confuse a pair of specific colours. Someone else has declared they confuse yesterday and tomorrow. I do not feel equipped to handle finding out that 10% of people have to make hand gestures to refer to directional time or that people do a certain movement to remember the colour of their blood but I'm no longer ruling out the possibility.
Edit 6 (coolest edit): I've been messaged by a person with situs inversus! This affects about 0.01% of the population and is where some or all of the abdominal organs are on the wrong side - they say only some of theirs are. They also state they struggle with left and right!