Mestrado em Desenvolvimento da Criança na Variante de Desenvolvimento MotorThe reasons why some people use preferably one hand to perform everyday tasks instead of the other are still the object of study of
many investigators. Even if ambidexterity would seem an advantage,
the fact is, even small babies show preferences for one side over the other on their most basic movements. These lateral asymmetries are always present but suffer fluctuations throughout life and even from
one activity to another, performed minutes later.
A very common and effective way of studying manual asymmetries is through tapping tasks, following and adapting the models of
authors like Stevens (1886) and Wing and Kristofferson (1973).
These authors showed the scientific community that the synchronization-continuation experiments were valid and could be used to investigate the process of timekeeping and a variety of different aspects related to motor control. Our work was based on these previous investigations and has the
purpose of analyzing the ability of keeping a rhythm, in children on a bimanual tapping task, as well as the manual asymmetries
displayed while doing so. The children's performance was compared to that of adult musicians, who are expected to have a better than average performance on this type of tasks
