Lefties 'perform badly at school'

London, Dec 2 : Left-handed children do less well in tests at school than their right-handed peers, says a new study, which found that the gap does not diminish as they age.

The research, which was conducted by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that children who are left-handed score lower in IQ tests and throughout their school career will score around 1percent lower in tests than right-handed children.

In the study, researchers looked at the results of more than 10,000 children, and found that left-handers perform less well in IQ tests and tests for 11- and 14-year-olds.

"Left-handed children perform worse than right-handed ones in terms of cognitive outcomes at ages eight, 11 and 14," the Independent quoted the researchers, as saying.

"The gap between left-handed girls and right-handed girls is larger than the gap between left-handed boys and right-handed boys ... there is no sense of catching-up in non-right-handed girls.

"Mixed-handers of both genders do less well than right-handed children across a wider range of outcomes," they added.

The study, by Professors Paul Gregg, Carol Propper and Katharina Janke, found that about 10 per cent of children were left-handed and about 7.5 per cent ambidextrous. ne theory put forward for the poor performance of ambidextrous children is that they may have become mixed-handed due to lack of parental awareness of their development and less stimulation.

ANI