Comparison of bare-handed and glove-handed finger dexterity.

Abstract

handed), predictive of glove-handed finger dexterity? Of more than 300 production workers from a large electronics manufacturing facility, who were tested on the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), 30 pairs of individuals, each pair matched on the finger dexterity score of the GATB, were selected. The distribution of scores of the matched pairs closely approximated that of the normal population. The Purdue Test of Manipulative Dexterity was then administered, one S of each pair taking the rest bare-handed, the other, glove-handed. A t test comparing the mean scores of the two groups on the Purdue Pegboard yielded a significant difference (p = .001), favoring the bare-handed group on all five measures of the test. While extremely low product-moment correlations were obtained between the bare-handed and glove-handed Purdue scores, moderate to high significant correlations (corrected for attenuation) were obtained between the GATB finger-dexterity scores and both bare-handed and glove-handed Purdue scores (GATB vs. Purdue (Right + Left + Both) without gloves: r = .59, p < .01; GATB vs. Purdue (~i~ht + Left + Both) with gloves: r = .78, p < .01). Thus, we conclude that even sheer, lightweight gloves significantly reduce finger dexterity, and the GATB measure of finger dexterity is useful in predicting glove-handed finger dexterity while the Purdue Pegboard is not. While previous studies by Bradley (1956) and Jenkins ( 1958) have shown that gloved performance is superior to performance with bare hands for some manual control operations, present results clearly indicate the superiority of using bare hands for performing tasks of the type found in conventional finger dexterity tests.