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Bimanual interference in children performing a dual motor task
1Faculty of Psychology, University of Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. ellen.otte@rub.de
Insights
Children as young as four can coordinate both hands for dual motor tasks. While performance improves with age, bimanual interference remains consistent across developmental stages, with tracing shape impacting performance.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Motor Control
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Bimanual coordination involves performing different tasks with each hand simultaneously.
- Understanding developmental changes in bimanual interference is crucial for cognitive and motor development research.
- Previous research suggests age-related improvements in motor task performance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the development of bimanual interference in children performing a dual motor task.
- To assess how age influences performance on simultaneous unimanual and bimanual tasks.
- To determine if intermanual interference decreases with age during bimanual task execution.
Main Methods:
- Forty right-handed children aged 4 to 11 years participated, divided into four age groups.
- Participants performed unimanual and bimanual tasks: tapping with the non-preferred hand and tracing a circle or square with the preferred hand.
- Performance metrics included tap count, tap trace length, and mean tracing velocity.
Main Results:
- Motor task performance (tapping and tracing) improved with age in both unimanual and bimanual conditions.
- The percentage of intermanual interference did not significantly differ across the four age groups.
- A significant effect of tracing shape was observed, with decreased tracing velocity for circles compared to squares in the dual task.
Conclusions:
- Children as young as four years demonstrate the ability to coordinate both hands in a dual motor task.
- Despite age-related performance gains, intermanual interference remains relatively stable during childhood.
- The complexity of the tracing shape (circle vs. square) influences bimanual task performance across all age groups.
Abstract:
The present study addressed the development of bimanual interference in children performing a dual motor task, in which each hand executes a different task simultaneously. Forty right-handed children (aged 4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9-11years, ten in each age group) were asked to perform a bimanual task in which they had to tap with a pen using the non-preferred hand and simultaneously trace a circle or a square with a pen using the preferred hand as quickly as possible. Tapping and tracing were also performed unimanually. Differences between unimanual and bimanual performance were assessed for number of taps, length of tap trace and mean tracing velocity. It was assumed that with increasing age, better bimanual coordination would result in better performance on the dual task showing less intermanual interference. The results showed that tapping and tracing performance increased with age, unimanually as well as bimanually, consistent with developmental advancement. However, the percentage of intermanual interference due to bimanual performance was not significantly different in the four age groups. Although performing the dual task resulted in mutual intermanual interference, all groups showed a significant effect of tracing shape. More specifically, all age groups showed a larger percentage decrease in tracing velocity when performing the circle compared to the square in the dual task. The present study reveals that children as young as four years are able to coordinate both hands when tapping and tracing bimanually.
