Training 90° bimanual coordination at high frequency yields dependence on kinesthetic information and poor performance of dyadic unimanual coordination

Two groups of participants were trained to be proficient at performing bimanual 90 degrees coordination either at a high (2.5 Hz) or low (0.5 Hz) frequency with both kinesthetic and visual information available. At high frequency, participants trained for twice as long to achieve performance comparable to participants training at low frequency. Participants were then paired within (lowlow or high-high) or between (low-high) frequency groups to perform a visually coupled dyadic unimanual 90 degrees coordination task, during which they were free to settle at any jointly determined frequency to synchronize their rhythmic movements. The results showed that the coordination skill was frequency-specific. For dyads with one or both members who had learned the 90 degrees bimanual coordination at low frequency, the performance settled at a low frequency (R-.10.5 Hz) with more successfully synchronized trials. For dyads with both members who had learned the 90 degrees bimanual coordination at high frequency, they struggled with the task and performed poorly. The dyadic coordination settled at a higher frequency (R-.11.5 Hz) on average, but with twice the variability in settling frequency and significantly fewer synchronized trials. The difference between the dyadic coordination and bimanual tasks was that only visual information was available to couple the movements in the former while both kinesthetic and visual information were available in the latter. Therefore, the high frequency group must have relied on kinesthetic information to perform both coordination tasks while the low frequency group was well able to use visual information for both. In the mixed training pairs, the low frequency trained member of the pair was likely responsible for the better performance. These conclusions were consistent with results of previous studies.