The Effect of the Sensory Information and Age on the Transition of the Relative Phase in Bimanual Coordination Pattern

Integration and interpret of sensory feedback helps to performing of bimanual coordination tasks. The purpose of present research was to study of the effect of sensory information and age differences on the transition of the relative phase in bimanual coordination task.
Subjects and Fifteen male young adults (25±3.9 y) and 15 male elder (66.06±6.12 y), all of whom right-handed, were selected by available sampling method. Participants started performing the task with bimanual coordination device with anti-phase pattern at frequency 0.75 Hz which was increased by 0.25 Hz in 5-seconds steps and as far as the transition occurred toward in-phase pattern. The final frequency considered was at 5 Hz. The task was performed under 8 sensory conditions. Data analyzed by mixed analysis of variance with repeated measures and paired-samples t-test with Bonferroni correction for pair comparisons of the interaction effects.
The findings revealed that main effects of senses and group and also the interaction effects between vision-audition, vision-proprioception, audition-proprioception and audition-group were significant (P These results showed the positive effect of afferent information on the speed of the relative phase. In addition, these findings suggest that bimanual coordination task performed under close-loop control system.