Self-touching and attentional processes: The role of task difficulty, selection stage, and sex differences

Abstract

Lateral and bilateral self-touching movements were studied in a group of men and women performing a series of attentional tasks. In all tasks, subjects were instructed to selectively attend to, and “shadow” (i.e., repeat outloud), one of two passages that were presented simultaneously through earphones. Loudness, voice quality, or thematic content determined which passage had to be selected and shadowed. Performance was significantly better when shadowing on the basis of loudness or voice quality (an earlier, easier selection) than when following content (a more difficult selection that occurs at a later stage in the information processing continuum). However, self-touching rates during performance were not simply a function of task difficulty but seemed to depend on the processing stage at which selection occurred as well as on the type of selection involved. Strong, significant associations emerged between lateral self-touching and performance measures in most of the tasks for the women but in only one task for the men. The sample size on which these correlations are based is small and, hence, these findings must be interpreted with caution. However, in the light of previous findings on sex differences with these tasks, the present results suggest that lateral movements may serve different functions in men and women.