How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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right-handed, and the world, from tramcar to news¬ paper, from corkscrews to traffic regulations, is arranged for their convenience. A left-handed individual is no worse off than a right-handed individual biologically, but socially he is at a great disadvantage. The left-handedness of many is not even apparent, because it is masked by an acquired right-handedness, and while such “ converted ” left-handers may become extremely deft, many of them remain clumsy throughout their entire lives. We shall have occasion to demonstrate the splendid compensations open to the left-handed individual in our chapter on compensation. Suffice to say, in this description, that a masked sinistrality, or left-handedness, is one of the commonest causes of relative physical inferiority, and an exaggeration of an individual’s total sense of inadequacy. One special aspect of the difficulty of the congenitally left-handed child deserves especial mention because ignorance of this condition results so often in the diagnosis of feeble-mindedness or stupidity. The congenital left¬ hander finds motion from right to left much simpler and more natural than motion from left to right, which is normal for the right-handed. This tendency, also affects the movement of the eyes, and the left-handed child finds reading and writing from right to left much simpler than the usual way, from left to right. When such a child, even though he uses his right hand for most work, attempts to read, he twists his syllables, or reads entirely from the end of the word instead of from the beginning. This condition, which is much commoner than is believed, is best called dyslexia strepho symbolic a, which means simply that the child has difficulty in reading because he twists his letters. The condition is often falsely called congenital word-blindness. The following diagram shows how a child of this type tends to read ordinary words. A. MANHATTAN Normally read thus, from left to right by right- handed child.