Field Tennis Racket Incorporation in Left-Handed and Right-Handed Children: Spatial (In)Compatibility Between Vibratory Stimulation at the Instrument and Perception in the Palm of the Hands

Abstract

The judgment of the temporal order of two stimuli received in rapid succession, one for each prehensile member, is reversed when the members are crossed; however, when the stimulus is detected through the end of an implement, spatial compatibility is crucial for a lower frequency of error. We asked 46 children to hold a tennis racket in each hand and determine the side of the first of two vibrations, applied successively at the string of each racket, in four conditions: (i) aligned hands and rackets, (ii) crossed forearms, (iii) crossed rackets, (iv) forearms and rackets crossed. The frequency of error in conditions (ii) and (iii) was higher than conditions (i) and (iv). The children preferentially referred to the location of the information in the strings of the rackets, where the vibration was produced, and not to the hands, where the vibrations are actually felt. The results support the hypothesis of transferring subjective tactile perception from the hand to the instrument, as if it had been perceptually incorporated. In conditions (ii) and (iii) the right-handed children achieved better performance when the reference vibration occurred on the right side.