Bimanual coordination: influence of age and gender.

Introduction: Bimanual hand coordination is very important in carrying out day to day activities like buttoning the shirt, driving, picking up objects. It depends on various factors like age, gender, education, intactness of central and peripheral nervous system, Occupation and lifestyle.

Aim: The aim of the study was to compare the efficiency of bimanual hand coordination between right handed male and female subjects and to correlate efficiency index with age of those subjects.

Methods: The study group included 60 right handed healthy male and 60 right handed healthy female subjects of age group between 11-60 years. Institutional ethical clearance and Informed consent from subjects was taken. The efficiency of bimanual hand coordination was assessed by the use of bimanual hand coordination test apparatus with electrical chronoscope. The time (T) taken for completion of the task and the error (e) committed was recorded by the chronoscope and efficiency index (E.I) was calculated as E.I= (T-e)/T *100.

Results: The mean age of males was 32 ± 11 years and females were 32 ± 13 years. The efficiency index of males (95.08 ± 5.24) was significantly higher than females (92.16 ± 6.69) with p value <0.005. Negative correlation of efficiency index with age was observed (r=-0.343, p=0.0001). It was concluded that bimanual hand coordination was better in males as compared to females and the efficiency index decreases with age in these subjects.

Conclusion: The present study showed that males have better bimanual coordination when compared to their female counterparts and aging causes decline in efficiency of bimanual coordination.