Verbal-manual time sharing in children as a function of task priority.
Eighty-three normal, right-handed children performed unimanual finger tapping recitation of a tongue twister, and both tasks concurrently. Trade-offs in dual-task performance were measured as the priority assigned to each task was manipulated. Irrespective of task priority, speaking interfered to a greater degree with right-hand tapping than with left-hand tapping, but the effect of tapping upon verbal production and speech errors was not lateralized. The asymmetric effect of speech upon tapping, which was seen in 85.5% of the children, cannot be attributed to the disparity between hands in baseline tapping rate. The findings suggest that time-sharing asymmetry reflects cerebral lateralization of speech, but only some of the results would be predicted on the basis of a functional distance principle of cerebral organization.
D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*