title: Rightward biases during bimanual reaching.
abstract: Two experiments were carried out to investigate whether attention is biased toward the right hand of right handers during bimanual coordination (Peters 1981). A novel discontinuous double-step reaching task was developed, where right-handed participants executed a bimanual reach followed by a left or right hand unimanual reach. Asymmetries in the downtime between the bimanual and unimanual reach portions (the refractory period) were used to infer the direction of attention. A shorter right hand refractory period was found in the first experiment, indicating a rightward bias in attention. In a second experiment, shifting the focus of attention during the bimanual portion of the reach altered the direction and magnitude of the asymmetry in a way consistent with the attentional bias hypothesis. The role of attention during bimanual reaching, and a further programme of experimental work aimed at clarifying the nature of these rightward biases during discrete bimanual coordination is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. gbucking@uwo.ca
authors.forename: Gavin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Buckingham
authors.forename: David P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Carey
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006225:Hand; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult