Why do some struggle to tell left from right?

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Why do some struggle to tell left from right?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Quick: Which hand is your west hand?

Unless you belong to one of a few cultures that exclusively use cardinal directions*, that’s not easy to answer. It’s not someone you’re intuitively tracking. Humans aren’t born knowing left and right either. It’s something we have to learn, basically through rote memorization, until it becomes second nature—just like how you learned your times table. And just like some people struggle to get the times table down for one reason or another, it’s not surprising the same would apply to left and right.

* I mention cultures that use cardinal direction because they really drive the point home. There are cultures that have no concept of left and right. They say something is to their north, or to their west. They know which direction is which as intuitively as you know left and right—they don’t even have to think about it.

You (likely) don’t have an intuitive sense of cardinal direction like that, because you weren’t raised in a culture that forced you to develop one. Neither form of direction is something we’re born with—it’s a cultural thing that we learn. It’s just so *ingrained* in our culture that it seems natural.

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