Intermanual transfer of somaesthetic information: a two-point discrimination experiment

Twenty-four men and 24 women, all university students, judged whether two-point aesthesiometric applications, either both to the same palm (intramanual condition) or one to each palm (intermanual condition) were of the "same" or "different" spans. The main question was to determine the extent to which there is a loss of accuracy during intermanual comparisons, and by inference, interhemispheric relay. A second question, the extent to which this loss is a function of the difficulty of the task, was to be answered by the inclusion of span-differences above, at, and below threshold. Difficult trials were associated with a highly significant intramanual advantage of 4.74%, and easy trials with a non-significant intramanual advantage of 1.16%. For both intra- and intermanual conditions, subjects made more errors as a function of decreasing "span-difference". The two hands performed equally well, and the order of stimulation between the two hands made no difference in the results. The intramanual advantage could not be construed as an effect of response set (i.e., an artefact of subject's inherent bias for "same" or "different" judgements), nor as a scaling effect (e.g., of span scales relating to receptive field properties, relating in turn to interhemispheric relay). There was no evidence of a sex difference in basic ability, nor in the cost of hemispheric relay. It was concluded that there is a loss of precision in interhemispheric relay of somaesthetic discrimination, but this can only be detected close to threshold.