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.
Hatta
T
T
Unit of Behavior and Information Processing, School of Informatics and Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan. thatta@info.human.nagaya-u.ac.jp
Kawakami
A
A
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*