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Whether a person becomes right- or left-handed depends largely on practice rather than being hardwired into the brain, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Johns Hopkins University, Science Alert reports.
To test the idea, researchers asked right-handed volunteers to write letters and numbers using their elbows — a task none of them had previously practiced. Participants performed equally poorly with both elbows, showing no inherent advantage for the dominant side.
After a period of training, however, participants significantly improved their writing with either elbow, regardless of which side they practiced.
The findings suggest that hand dominance develops through years of experience performing precise tasks rather than from an innate specialization of one side of the brain for fine motor control, the researchers said.
