Handedness is most often measured by questionnaires that assess an individual’s preference for using a particular hand to perform a variety of tasks. While such assessments have proved reliable, they do not address the underlying neurobehavioral processes that give rise to the choice of which hand to use. Recent research has indicated that handedness associated with hemispheric specializations for different aspects of sensorimotor performance. We now hypothesize that an individual’s choice of which hand to use for a given task should result from an interaction between these underlying neurobehavioral asymmetries with task conditions. We test this hypothesis by manipulating two factors in targeted reaching movements: 1) Region of workspace and 2) visual feedback conditions. The first manipulation modified the geometric and dynamic requirements of the task for each arm, whereas the second modified the sensorimotor performance asymmetries, an effect predicted by previous literature. We expected that arm choice would be reflected by an interaction between these factors. Our results indicated that removing visual feedback improved the relative performance of the non-dominant arm and increased the choice to use this arm for targets near midline, an effect that was enhanced for targets requiring larger movement amplitudes. We explain these findings in the context of the dynamic dominance hypothesis of handedness and discuss their implications for the link between hemispheric asymmetries in neural control and hand preference.

The aim of this study was to compare the coincidence-anticipation timing accuracy of athletes of different racket sports with various stimulus velocity requirements. Ninety players (15 girls, 15 boys for each sport) from tennis (M age = 12.4 yr., SD = 1.4), badminton (M age = 12.5 yr., SD = 1.4), and table tennis (M age = 12.4 yr., SD = 1.2) participated in this study. Three different stimulus velocities, low, moderate, and high, were used to simulate the velocity requirements of these racket sports. Tennis players had higher accuracy when they performed under the low stimulus velocity compared to badminton and table tennis players. Badminton players performed better under the moderate speed comparing to tennis and table tennis players. Table tennis players had better performance than tennis and badminton players under the high stimulus velocity. Therefore, visual and motor systems of players from different racket sports may adapt to a stimulus velocity in coincidence-anticipation timing, which is specific to each type of racket sports.

Sporting history has a direction-specific impact on dynamic postural control. Sporting history, sex, and limb dominance do not influence knee-joint proprioception when tested in an open kinetic chain using passive repositioning.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of age and maturity on anthropometric and various fitness characteristics in young competitive female tennis players. Sixty-one players, aged 10.4–13.2 years (11.8 ± 0.8) were measured for standing and sitting heights, body mass, skinfolds, grip strength, and agility, and dichotomized into two age (U12 and U14) and maturity (earliest and latest) groups according to their chronological age and maturity status. The results revealed significant age effects for stature, sitting height, leg length, and hand grip in favor of the older players. Girls contrasting in maturation differed significantly for all anthropometric and physical performance variables except for body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (BF%), and hexagon agility test. The earliest maturing group showed significantly higher values for anthropometric measures and better results in the hand grip test than the latest maturing group. After controlling for chronological age, differences were revealed between contrasting maturity groups in stature, sitting height, BF%, and the hand grip test. The findings highlight the age- and maturity-related trends in body size and muscular strength among young female tennis players in the pubertal period. Nevertheless, the differences in the body composition and agility of the contrasting age and maturity groups were negligible.

We previously reported that asymmetrical patterns of hand preference are updated and modified by current sensorimotor conditions. We now examine whether participation in long-term training in the upper extremity sport fencing might modify arm selection and performance asymmetries. Eight fencers and eight non-fencers performed reaching movements under three experimental conditions: (1) non-choice right; (2) non-choice left; and (3) choice, either right or left arm as selected by subject. The non-choice conditions allowed assessment of potential interlimb differences in movement performance, while the choice condition allowed assessment of the frequency and pattern of arm selection across subject groups. Our findings showed that the athlete groups showed substantially greater symmetry in both our performance and selection measures. These findings suggest that arm selection and performance asymmetries can be altered by intense long-term practice.

Rhythm training is an integral part of sports. The purposes of the study were to analyze the effects of rhythm training on tennis performance and rhytmic competence of tennis players, to compare the improvement levels of tennis specific and general rhythm training and to examine the effects of shorter and longer tempos on rhythmic competence. Thirty university students whose mean score of International Tennis Number (ITN) was 7.3 (±0.9) were divided randomly into three sub-groups: Tennis Group, General Rhythm Training Group and Tennis-Specific Rhythm Training Group. The experimental procedure lasted 8 weeks. During this period, all groups had the same tennis training twice a week. The Tennis Group had regular tennis training sessions. In addition to regular tennis training sessions, the General Rhythm Training Group followed the general rhythm training sessions and the Tennis-Specific Rhythm Training Group had tennis-specific rhythm training. The measurement instruments were ITN, Rhythmic Competence Analysis Test and Untimed Consecutive Rally Test. The results indicated that participation in tennis-specific or general rhythm training resulted in progress in tennis playing levels, forehand consistency performance and rhythmic competence of the participants. On the other hand, attendance to the regular 8-week tennis training was enough to solely increase the tennis playing level but not sufficient to develop forehand consistency performance and rhythmic competence. Although the participants in the TRTG had better improvement scores than the ones in the GRTG, no significant difference was found between the rhythm training groups. The results also revealed that participants exhibited higher rhythmic competence scores on fast tempo compared to slow tempo.

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My purpose in this study was to examine the effect of verbal and visual feedback on an anticipation-timing task during a series of acquisition and retention trials. Participants were 48 high school students who were randomly assigned to visual-visual, visual-verbal, verbal-visual, and verbal-verbal conditions. I used a Bassin Anticipation Timer to measure coincidence-anticipation timing. Absolute error and variable error were calculated for 4 blocks of 10 trials in the acquisition phases, and 2 blocks of 10 trials in the retention phase to analyze the students' performances by repeated measures using ANOVA. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference among the groups in their performance of the task. Thus, it appears that, for facilitating anticipation timing, whether the feedback is visual or verbal may make no difference to learning or acquiring this skill.