Lateralized interference effects: evidence for a processing style by modality interaction

A time-sharing paradigm was used to study potential interference effects of concurrent successive-auditory/vocal, successive-visual/motor, simultaneous-auditory/vocal, and simultaneous-visual/motor tasks on right- and left-handed manual-motor behaviors of differential levels of difficulty. Participants were selected from each of three developmental levels from 9 through 20 years of age. Results suggested that processing style (i.e., successive or simultaneous) interacts with modality (i.e., auditory/vocal or visual/motor) in terms of lateralized interference effects; however, potential effects due to age level were obfuscated by differential concurrent-task difficulties.