Our left-handed test gives you an indication of your overall degree of left-handedness and how you relate to other left-handers. It is rare for people to be 100% left-handed at everything and we wanted to find out how “mixed-handed” lefthanders are.
If you haven’t completed the test yourself yet you can use this link to go to the test form and you can see a summary of the results so far here.
To get the overall score, we have weighted the various factors so, for example, writing left-handed gets a far higher weighting in the overall score than which way you hold a bat two-handed. The table below shows how we weighted the different questions:
| Question | Answer Value |
| Writing hand | 18 |
| Cutting with scissors (we lowered the weighting for this as a lot of left-handed people have never been given the opportunity to use left-handed scissors so have continued cutting right-handed) | 6 |
| Holding a bat (one handed) | 10 |
| Eating with a spoon | 9 |
| Holding a toothbrush | 9 |
| Brushing hair | 9 |
| Eye (using a telescope) | 5 |
| Ear (using a telephone) | 5 |
| Foot (kicking a ball) | 5 |
| Folding arms, which is on top | 4 |
| Clapping, which hand is on top | 4 |
| Clasping hands behind back, which hand is holding | 4 |
| Throwing a ball | 4 |
| Turning the pages of a book | 4 |
| Using a bat or club two-handed (hand on bottom) | 4 |
| Total score for all answers | 100 |
I do wonder if left-handers exhibit a higher tendency toward ambidexterity because they are forced to adapt to a right-handed world.
I was forced by my parents to use my right hand for writing even before I started school, but they failed to “teach me right-handedness” for other activities. At the table I just spontaneously used whichever hand was comfortable, so I learned no “manners”. However, when I do art, colouring freely, I use my left hand! Yet when I have to draw straight lines, etc. I use the right hand. As for sports, I was not allowed to be part of teams, so I did little sports, and batting a ball was difficult for me; plus, you need your dominant eye to guide hitting the ball! The crossing your arms question was confusing – I have had students doing this when I assessed them, and the left-handed ones always had their left hand above the right arm. ***** And it would be interesting to add which foot people use first as they approach stairs (either to go up or down). I cannot use my right hand to put drops in my eyes, even though that move requires precision (similar to handwriting). Furthermore, in doing Feldenkrais exercises I have trouble crossing my mid-line, etc. You might help us by giving more information on what happens when parents/teachers/caregivers force a child to be right-handed – the brain is not wired that way, and they are messing with the circuits!