Individual differences in processing resources modulate bimanual interference in pointing

Constanze Hesse,Jutta Billino,Laura Koroknai

doi:10.1007/s00426-018-1050-3

Constanze Hesse, Jutta Billino + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1050-3

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Abstract

Coordinating both hands during bimanual reaching is a complex task that can generate interference during action preparation as often indicated by prolonged reaction times for movements that require moving the two hands at different amplitudes. Individual processing constraints are thought to contribute to this interference effect. Most importantly, however, the amount of interference seems to depend considerably on overall task demands suggesting that interference increases as the available processing resources decrease. Here, we further investigated this idea by comparing performance in a simple direct cueing and a more difficult symbolic cueing task between three groups of participants that supposedly vary in their processing resources, i.e., musicians, young adults and older adults. We found that the size of interference effects during symbolic cueing varied in the tested groups: musicians showed the smallest and older adults the largest interference effects. More importantly, a regression model, using processing speed and processing capacity as predictor variables, revealed a clear link between the available processing resources and the size of the interference effect during symbolic cueing. In the easier direct cueing task, no reliable interference was observed on a group level. We propose that the susceptibility to bimanual interference is modulated by the task-specific processing requirements in relation with the available processing resources of an individual.

Highlights

Coordinating our two hands is an essential human skill that allows us to perform most everyday tasks, such as dressing ourselves, making breakfast, driving to work, or typing out a manuscript, with ease
Error bars depict ± 1 SEM between subjects notion, we found no correlation between overall MTs and the size of the bimanual interference effect in the symbolic cueing condition, r(47) = 0.17, p = .27, and even a positive correlation in the direct cueing condition, r(47) = 0.32, p = .027, indicating that participants with longer movement times tended to show larger congruency effects
We aimed to investigate how task demands in relation with the available processing resources modulate the bimanual interference effect, i.e., the finding that reaction time (RT) tend to be prolonged for bimanual reaching movements with asymmetric amplitudes as compared to symmetric ones

Summary

Introduction

Coordinating our two hands is an essential human skill that allows us to perform most everyday tasks, such as dressing ourselves, making breakfast, driving to work, or typing out a manuscript, with ease. It seems to take participants longer to plan and initiate movements that require them to move their two hands to targets presented at different distances and/or directions as compared to starting movements to targets that are located equidistantly and in the same movement direction. This interference effect seems to indicate that incongruent movements are more complex to

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