Author(s) :

Rachel R. Q. Zeng.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Humans perform better at dexterity tasks with their dominant hand, but can training in one hand affect the performance of the other? This study examines the impact of increased non-dominant hand usage in everyday life tasks on intermanual transfer learning. I conducted weekly drawing tests of 14 research participants split into groups that either practiced or did not practice non-dominant hand use between testing. Aiming to lead to a better understanding of the scale and confines human dynamics pose during the process of intermanual transfer learning, the experiment yielded the following results: (1) general, not-task-specific short-term practice improved fine motor skill performance by an average of 1% for group A right-hand (R) accuracy and an increase of 2% for left-hand (L) performance after the first training phase with p-values of 0.61 and 0.23 respectively, which suggests no statistical significance. (2) Short-term non-dominant-hand practice by conducting an increased number of everyday tasks shows a possible close relationship between the factors of time, practice, and side, suggested by FTimeSideGroup = 2.53 and ηp² = 0.17, which as of now lack greater statistic power with p = 0.14. (3) Reducing practice with the non-dominant hand resulted in reduced performance quality, which is visible in the average drop of accuracy by 1% of group A subjects after ceasing training with the non-dominant hand for a week. The connectivity between the factors of the interaction between time, side, and practice can also be observed in the decrease of performance quality when regarding F = 3.95 and ηp² = 0.25 with p = 0.07, suggesting lack of statistical relevance. Summing up, though discovering possible impact of training on L and R performance accuracy after a short amount of time, these research results are not sufficient in statistical power to certain a noticeable impact of non-specific practice on cross-hand education. The experiment design, nevertheless, established a paradigm for studying intermanual transfer learning in a school setting and identified methods and limitations to assess drawing skills for quantitative analysis for future research.