Dual-tasking: Is manual tapping independent of concurrently executed saccades?

Maintaining both spatial and temporal accuracy of concurrent motor actions is a challenging behavioral requirement in multi-tasking, where possible resource bottlenecks may become apparent when these units are shared between tasks. This study addresses the question of whether periodic self-paced finger movements (tapping) compulsorily interact with concurrently executed saccades, because they share some common neural control pathways. We employed a dual-task paradigm which was previously used to demonstrate strong interference between independent but concurrently conducted bimanual tapping tasks (Wachter, C.

Coordination of a discrete response with periodic finger tapping: additional experimental aspects for a subtle mechanism.

The authors investigated the coordination of periodic right-hand tapping with single stimulus-evoked discrete lefthand taps to check for task interactions and a possible relationship between phase resetting (see tapping literature; e.g., J.