In "Left- or right handed or something else?", I highlighted the problem of finding skills and their lateralization in order to know how to use them.
Switching hands is concerned with the problems of people who have forever irreplaceable lost a limb, more specifically the hand with or without the whole arm, and now have to adjust.
Person with some degree of cross-laterality can confirm that using an object with both limbs enables them to have a kind of skill flow that feels to enable a very complete cooperation of skills lateralized on different sides. They may still feel more comfortable with specific stances that require a certain laterality to perform more within one skill field and are less capable if switching these positions. Ice hockey has left and right sided sticks with corresponding advantages in wing positions with players often being suited more for one or the other side. The skill flow can nevertheless be utilized by mentally using the non-existent limb in an imagined auxiliary grip to enhance performance.
This can result in mental stress if the condition of a forever irreplaceable lost a limb is not given. Humans can handle stress, drummers can temporarily switch their dominant hand, but an overdose of mental stress can induce critical system failures in every human.
What happens to skills that are not used on that side?
It seems to depend.
Very unequal capability of eyes to provide the brain with usable images can lead to a loss of function by the eye that does provide information of limited to no use in comparison to the better eye. The loss of function goes along with a grab of ocular dominance on all kinds of skill by the over performing eye. In order to maintain bi-ocular sight, temporary eye patches that reduce visual recognition ability of the better eye get prescribed.
Persons who were forced/convinced to use their non-preferred hand for writing, and often for every other possible task, can use their original preference under new settings or when they figured out their own mental construct for acting like that. There are claims that they do have some kinds of confusion problem due to this set up.
I presume, the difference is what the brain decides to do about these situations. The reported confusions can be attempts to tackle issues in a way the biological brain still sees as opportune that a cultural adaption of the mind tries to overrule.
Laterality - asymmetry for organization and its effect on the ability to switch
A perfectly symmetric human looks perfect and - scary. One of the first art lessons.
Humans with malnutrition tend to have more tendency for asymmetry.
A high degree of symmetry is perceived as attractive.
Current left-handers have more symmetric arms than right-handers.
Lateralization is the development of sidedness, mammals and other animals have all degrees of asymmetry spreed over all features of their bodies. For humans, this asymmetry gets always most pronounced by a stronger development of the right side and there is hardly any measurably more pronounced development on the left side. Situs inversus is the rare case of the opposite. There is a correlation between left lateralization and symmetry and right lateralization and asymmetry. The lateralization program itself seems to be an organization function that gives different symmetry or asymmetry values to everything throughout body and brain. These differences do not necessarily lead to any kind of cross-dominance.
They are presumably helpful for organizing self-perception. The skills that are derived from these kinds of asymmetries are not located somewhere left or right or in between. Under the influence of the lateralization program, the pronunciation of features is pulled from the default setting on the extreme left to the right with accompanying increase in asymmetry. In the default setting left with its high degree of symmetry, the skill values for the right side are less likely to reach a level that makes use of a range of specific skills impossible.
All kinds of cultures have been able to reach very low levels of reported left-handers, none has been able to achieve similar low levels of right-handers.Prior left hand dominance provides an adaptive advantage if being compelled to switch.
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