Timing Control and Finger, Arm, and Whole Body Movements

While physical educators have both a theoretical and practical interest in the ability of the individual to coordinate his movements so that a certain act can be accomplished at exactly the right instant, there has been little research on this problem. The present investigation concerned coincidence response, namely completion of a target-directed motor act at the exact instant that a large-scale laterally-moving target passed a predetermined fixed index. Measurements were made of three types of response movements as well as simple reaction-time. The average subject tended to complete the motor act prematurely under the conditions of the experiment. The proportion of common variance between finger, arm, and whole body responses ranged from 16 to 39 percent while the task specificity of individual differences ranged from 61 to 85 percent. Coincidence timing accuracy in the finger and the arm task failed to improve with practice under conditions of the experiment.