Motivation
It is observed that a sizable fraction of people have trouble having a spontaneous response spatial understanding of right and left, which does not appear in top or bottom say. It is said that the possible relation between this confusion and bilateral symettry exists [2].
In is also shown that the understanding of Right and Left lies in the right hemisphere.[1]
Thus, we would like to study this confusion and also try to find correlations with a increse in response time with respect to other languages. And also try to investigate correlations with other seemingly unrelated activities that differentiating between a forward slash and a backward slash, or how much time one takes to determine right-left with respect to different perspectives.
This is a challenging task but the motivation is not only to understand the underlying causes of the right lift confusion but also explore if this confusion can be bypassed by evoking other mental processes that are fairly independent.
Methodology
It is proposed to let volunteers from the course and beyond take a test that would be essentially a program taking inputs through a mouse and keyboard. By avoiding speech it is hoped that a better estimate of response time be found. Once the experiments are decided upon which would include first calibrating the non language dpendent response time for a particular person by showing various pictures and with a dot either to left or right and the volunteer must respond by clicking <- or ->. Later questions would be flashed of figuring out if an object is at the right and left side. The ratio of the two can be considered a measure to compare amongst volunteers.
Another part would include asking if the stomach of a person is on which side, where the dorsal and frontal views would be shown. This would test mental rotations and their correlations with our right left confusion. Finally is it also proposed that we show the number line and ask to press <- if a number flashed is negavie and -> if positive. Again later we re-train the volunteers to understand right as = and left as - and see if there is any improvement in response time
Repurcussions
Both no or true correlations would provide a clue to how language is connected to spatial representations and if we can bypass slowness in them by invoking other processes such as processes that handle mathematical reasoning associated with the left brain.