◎鄭寺音

Children who are left-handed or ambidextrous perform worse at school than right-handers, according to a study of national curriculum test results.

根據（英國）全國課程測驗結果，左撇子或是兩手都很靈巧的小孩，在學校的表現比右撇子差。

Left-handed girls fare worse than boys： while left-handers from both sexes start off performing worse, girls fail to catch up with their right-handed peers during later school life.

左撇子女孩進步比男孩差：左撇子，不管男女生，一開始的表現都比較差，女孩後來的學校生活，無法趕上右撇子的同儕。

Those who are ambidextrous from both sexes also fail to bridge the gap in performance, according to the study carried out by researchers from the University of Bristol for the Economic and Social Research Council.

根據這份布里斯托大學研究人員，為了經濟與社會研究委員會進行的研究，兩手都很靈巧的男女孩，也無法彌補表現的落差。

The researchers, who looked at the results of more than 10,000 children, reveal that left-handers perform less well in IQ tests.

研究人員觀察1萬多名孩童的研究結果顯示，左撇子在IQ測驗的表現較差。

"Left-handed children perform worse than right-handed ones in terms of cognitive outcomes at ages eight, 11 and 14," they conclude. "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.

他們總結道：「8、11、14歲的左撇子孩童，在認知結果方面表現比右撇子差，左撇子女孩與右撇子女孩的差距，比左撇子男孩與右撇子男孩的差距大。 」

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