Are nonproper chopstick holders clumsier than proper chopstick holders in their manual movements?
To examine the working hypothesis that a lack of childhood training in the fine-detailed finger movements illustrated by learning to use chopsticks properly as a child has later rendered such individuals clumsier in the execution of other more adult-like motor movements, four experiments were conducted. Groups of proper and nonproper users (both males and females) performed a task of picking up rice grains (Exp. 1), a pin-down task (Exp. 2), a task of unfastening nuts from bolts (Exp. 3), and a knot-tying task (Exp. 4). Only on the rice-grain transfer task and the knot-tying task, proper chopstick users showed better performance than nonproper users. On the pin-down task and the nuts-and-bolts task, no difference was found between groups. These results suggest that there is no clear evidence to support the hypothesis that a lack of early training for proper chopstick use makes such individuals more clumsy as adults in at least some motor movements.
Unit of Behavior and Information Processing, School of Informatics and Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan. thatta@info.human.nagaya-u.ac.jp
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D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003297:Cooking and Eating Utensils; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*