BETWEEN-LIMB ASYNCHRONIES DURING BIMANUAL COORDINATION - EFFECTS OF MANUAL DOMINANCE AND ATTENTIONAL CUEING

Whereas previous studies on interlimb coordination have mainly undersc ored the ubiquitous tendency to synchronize the motions of the limbs, the present experiment revealed a small, but distinct, interlimb async hrony or phase offset, i.e. the dominant limb led the non-dominant lim b during the production of bimanual circle drawing. This asynchrony wa s clearly evident in the majority of right-handers, but not in left-ha nders. Moreover, attentional cueing affected the size of the asynchron y. Instructions to visually monitor the dominant limb or non-dominant limb strengthened and weakened the phase offset, respectively. A multi factorial neural account is proposed to underly the temporal asynchron y. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd