THE EFFECTS OF 2 MATCHED MEMORY TASKS ON CONCURRENT FINGER TAPPING

In a dual task experiment, subjects were instructed to perform a singl e finger tapping task whilst either, concurrently memorizing words app earing randomly on a screen in front of them, or concurrently memorizi ng the positions of the words. Analysis of percentage change scores re vealed a significant tapping hand by task interaction; subjects showed a significantly larger left- than right-hand decrement when the task required memorizing the positions of the words and a non-significantly larger right- than left-hand decrement when the task required memoriz ing the words. These results suggest that the nature of the task deman ds determined the pattern of interference observed.