Introduction
It is generally thought that any decision making process is entirely dependent on the brain and that our decisions are based largely on relevant and sufficient information. However, according to the body specificity hypothesis, the way we interact with the physical world affects our judgments.Because people with different body types interact with the world in differnt ways, they also make different judgements [1]. It is also found that this different interaction (due to handedness) influences us at an early stage leading us to distinct representations of abstract concepts like kindedness and intelligence [2]. It has been shown that from an early age, right-handers associate rightward space more strongly
with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but the opposite is true for left-handers.However these contransting mental metaphors for good or bad cannot be attributed to linguistic experience, because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left.
The project wil consist of repitition of the experiments to investigate links between handedness and mental representation of abstract concepts by Casasanto, Daniel[1]. The following experiments have been proposed
a) Diagramming the good and bad :- Volunteers will perform a drawing task where an image is drawn in boxes to the left and right of a cartoon figure
b) The same experiment as above is repeated. Instead of drawing, the person is asked to point out the placing of the objects in left or right boxes.
c) The first experiment repeated with the volunteer being aware of his handedness
d) Body specific judgements of aliens' attributes :- Volunteers are shown abstract aliens and are asked to decide their nature , intelligent or less intelligent and so on.
e) Body specific influences in everyday decisions :-.Participants are required to judge verbal descriptions of job applicatnts or products on display.
f) A similar variant of the above experiments on children of the age group 5-7.
g) None of the published literature discusses the effects of ocular dominace in such studies. It is proposed to collect data ragarding ocular dominance of the participants along with the usual data.Ocular dominace will be tested either by questiionnare method or by Miles test[5].
It has been found that handedness affects learning of object-manipulation words if shown in different ways.Effects of pictures with a left-handed, right-handed, or bimanual perspective
on left- and right-handers’ learning of object-manipulation words in an artificial language was investigated.Right-handers recalled fewer definitions of words learned with a corresponding left-handed-perspective picture than with a right-handed-perspective picture. For left-handers, there was no effect of perspective. These findings suggest that mismatchesbetween pictures and mental simulations evoked by hearing action words can negatively affect right-handers’ learning.Left-handers, who encounter the right-handed perspective frequently, could presumably overcome the lack of motorexperience with visual experience and, therefore, not be influenced by picture perspective.