Issue 2 Vol. 40 1998

The influence of finger skill on reaction time in 1-, 3-, and 5-choice reaction tasks

PIEPER, W., LACHNIT, H.

We studied the influence of finger skill (controls, typists, pianists) in 102 right handed subjects on reaction time (RT) in 1-, 3-, and 5-choice reaction tasks with colored stimuli. Foreperiods varied randomly from 3s to 10s. Effects of age and gender were controlled experimentally. We found no influence of finger skill (differences between groups) in a simple reaction task. In both multiple choice reaction tasks, however, pianists were significantly faster than typists and controls, whereas the latter two did not differ from one another. The observed differences did not interact with effects of practice within tasks. This specific pattern of results suggests that the pianists' advantage in multiple choice reaction tasks is due to a highly variable stimulus-

response mapping ability.

Keywords: choice reaction time, manual skills

Short Title: Pieper, W. (1998) PsyBeit 2:224

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