Alfred Adler's theory of compensation applied to current studies on sidedness.

Handedness, which means the preferred use and greater efficiency of one hand, has been a subject of great interest for centuries. The whole scale of evaluation from ancient superstition and prejudice to current scientific theory has been applied to left-handedness in particular. It has even been stigmatized as a si~ of degeneration, a characteristic of criminals, and so on. Mariy have attempted to prove that conversion of left-handed children results in confusion, directional incongruity in space, reversals, stuttering and other types of speech impediment. This hypothesis was so thoroughly accepted that many of its exponents saw conversion as the source of all the difficulties in adjustment and learning. They warned parents and teachers not to convert a left-handed child lest cerebral confusion be provoked. Educators and teachers who gave ear to these admonitions found themselves in a state of confusion. They did not know whether or not to influence a child in his dextrality. Dr. Abram Blau, in his very valuable recent monograph Masterhand (1) makes this indecision on the part of educators responsible for the large increase of sinistrality among school children in the last few decades. A step toward clarification of the whole subject has been the emphasis upon the significant fact that handedness is but one feature of a more complex phenomenon, that of sidedness, and that eyes and legs and other paired organs manifest similar tendencies. Dr. B. S. Parson is the chief proponent of the theory that eyedness and handedness usually are linked together and that eyedness occurs first (2). He maintains further that the dominant or sighting eye determines the master hand; and, when left-eyedness appears in a righthanded individual, it may be assumed that he was originally left-handed but shifted by virtue of his early training. Dr.. Samuel T. Orton maintains (3) that most children develop predominant use of either the right or left hemisphere with a hereditary tendency as the determining factor. He substantiates this point of view with the observation that there is a "persistent appearance of left-handed