Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on why new skills can feel impossible to learn at the beginning

Learning a new skill can be deeply frustrating. 

Whether you're trying to play your first chord on a guitar, use chopsticks, swing a golf club or simply write your name with your non-dominant hand, the experience is often the same. 

You know exactly what you're trying to do, yet your body seems to have other ideas. Every movement feels awkward, clumsy and strangely unnatural. 

It's tempting to assume that some people are simply born more talented than others. We often describe elite athletes, musicians and artists as "naturals," as though their brains came pre-wired with abilities the rest of us lack. 

But what if that's not what's happening at all? 

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tackled this question by investigating one of the oldest mysteries in neuroscience: why is your dominant hand better than your other one? 

Scientists agree that most of us are born with a preference for using one hand over the other but don’t know why that preferred hand becomes so much more skilled. 

Does the dominant side of the brain have a built-in advantage for controlling movement? Or does the preferred hand simply become better because it has spent decades holding pens, using tools, throwing balls and brushing teeth? 

To answer that question, the researchers recruited right-handed volunteers and designed experiments where participants sat in front of a table with 5 objects in front of them. 

The first experiment: Is your dominant arm simply better at controlling movement? 

Experiment 1 involved participants reaching from the centre to each target using either their left or right arm. Then the same again with a 1.8 kg weight strapped to each participant's wrist. 

Adding the weight made both arms less precise, but it affected them almost equally. 

If the dominant side of the brain truly had a built-in advantage for controlling movement, this extra challenge should have magnified the difference between the two arms. 

It didn't. 

The second experiment: A lightweight stick 

Next the researchers attached a long, lightweight bamboo stick to the participants' forearms and the participants had to touch each target using the tip of the stick. 

This time, a dramatic difference emerged. 

The dominant arm produced much smoother, more consistent trajectories, while the non-dominant arm struggled to accurately control the stick's tip. 

The dominant was better because it had spent a lifetime learning how to control tools. 

The third experiment: What happens when neither arm has any experience? 

Finally, the researchers attached a pen to each participant's elbow and asked them to write the letter "A" and the number "8" using their elbows as the writing tool. 

If the dominant side of the brain is naturally better at controlling movement, the dominant elbow should still perform better. But if skill comes from practice, neither elbow should have an advantage because neither has spent decades learning to write. 

The dominant elbow showed no advantage whatsoever. 

Then they created a training program where each participant trained one elbow to write with a pen, and whichever elbow was trained became significantly better at writing. 

The research suggests that the brain builds skilled movement wherever sufficient practice occurs. 

The researchers concluded that we're not born with one hand that is inherently more skilled. Instead, skill appears to emerge from years of experience controlling increasingly complex movements with tools and objects. 

That means the frustrating awkwardness of learning something new isn't necessarily evidence that you lack talent. It may simply reflect the fact that your brain hasn't yet accumulated the thousands of repetitions needed to build those same movement programmes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Joining me now is doctor micheldekin sing good morning, Good morning.
I just loved the title of the study that you
see me, which is why does everything feel impossible? When
you first learn it?

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I felt like that too, So I loved it too,
and it made me think. You know, I recently hurt
my dominant hand and so I had to brush my
teeth with my other hand, and it is it felt impossible.
I was like, this is stupid. I cannot brush my
teeth on my left hand. Why can I not do this?
So this study is a good explanation for why. And
it's published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(00:48):
It's open source if you want to go read it,
have a look. But basically, we know scientists know that
we are born with a preference for using our left
or our right hand. We have a dominant hand, and
you don't really have a choice in that. But what
these scientists wanted to know is if you have, let's
say you're right handed, your brain then good at making

(01:08):
sure your right hand has an advantage. So it's always
better than your left hand, or are both of your
hands actually pretty fair and equal. So the reason why
I like this is I love the experiments they do.
So basically, they put people in a room and they
put them in front of some objects, and they asked
the people to reach to the objects using their left

(01:29):
or the right arm. Now all of these people were
right handed, and then they said, now do this again,
but they attached a one point at kilo to their
wrists to make it harder for them. And what they
found is that adding weight makes you useless. You were
equally useless for both your left and your right hand.
So that was experiment. One experiment too is I went, okay,

(01:49):
we're going to remove the weight and we're going to
give you this massive lightweight stick. Make you be far
away from the objects, and now you have to tap
the object with the end of this wobbly bamboo stick.
And what they found is that your dominant arm is
really good at this. Your non dominot literally and not
touch things. And the reason why I think that is

(02:11):
because you've spent a lot of time teaching your dominant
arm how to use tools, how to hold a pen,
how to hold scissors, and so it took that into account.
But the third experiments, and this is what I want
you all to do on a Sunday because this is fun,
is they basically tied a pen to people's elbows and
ask them to write the letter A and the number

(02:33):
eight using their elbows. Now, I've never written with my
elbows before, and Nora in these participants, and they all
sucked equally. What I said is, even if you were
right handed, your right elbow is just as terrible as
your left elbow at writing. They then sent them on
a training course where they taught either their right or
their left elbow to write, and they excelled and the

(02:54):
one that they taught, so basically, nobody is born with
a natural skill. The only reason why you're good at stuff,
they said in the study is if you train hard enough,
and so literally, if you want to be good at things,
the reason why useless is because you've not practiced. And
the way to get better is number one, attach a
panda your albow on number two, practice the thing that
you're working on more and you'll get better, which makes

(03:17):
sense when you say it out loud.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
There was a lovely little study. This is really interesting
because both my children write with their right hand and
yet play sport with their left hand. They left handed
batsman or left handed on surfboard or something like that.
And I was just like, maybe did I get it wrong?
Did they get the pen in the wrong hand when
they begin? But obviously that's just the way that.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
They've probably just practiced it enough and now that's the
good one.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, they probably went, oh, this feels a bit better
playing sport like this, so I'll just do this, And
that's what they did, and it's isn't that interesting? So interesting?

Speaker 3 (03:49):
So if you want to get better at something, don't
deplain it sucks. Just keep practicing and eventually it'll be easy.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Love it.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Thank you so much, Michelle.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio out